After weeks of aggressive posturing and threats of military intervention, the White House has unexpectedly and quite suddenly called-off its military strike against Syria. US Secretary of State John Kerry was quoted by the Wall Street Journal on September 14 as saying:

"There is no military solution [to the Syrian conflict]. "It has to happen at the negotiating table."

The calculus for war has suddenly changed and the Western aggression against Syria has - for now at least - been averted. For this, the global community can thank the Russian Federation.In an absolutely brilliant display of military might and diplomatic acumen, Moscow was able to dismantle the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance's jihad against Syria. Having been confronted with obstacles they simply could not surmount, Washington and friends seem to have decided to pull back and reassess their actions. American officials will make the face-saving claim that it was the American electorate that made them change their mind. Anyone that knows anything about American politics will immediately recognize this as bullshit. The matter was taken to Congress by the White House only as a last minute, desperate measure to find a legal, face-saving way of putting off the attack against Syria - most probably because something must have happened on the military front to have made them change their mind. A couple of weeks earlier we saw a similar thing take place in London. Make no mistake about it, this is a historic moment in global affairs. This is the first time in well over twenty years that the Western alliance has been dealt a significant blow by a rival superpower on the world stage. Moreover, and more importantly, what happened in Syria heralds the rise of Russia as a global power. If the Russo-Georgian war in 2008 secured Moscow's primacy in the Caucasus, Syria has helped Moscow step onto the world stage as a major player. A historic victory for Moscow While we don't yet know for sure exactly what it was that forced Washington to suddenly take a step back. What we do know for sure is that for the past several weeks Moscow's diplomatic corps, led by the Armenian Sergei Lavrov has been conquering hearts and minds around the world. By calling-off the military strike against Syria (even if temporarily), Washington has in effect placed Moscow in the driver's seat. Moscow's diplomatic corps has outclassed officials fielded by Anglo-American-Zionist alliance at every turn and the Russian military has stood-up against the best the West could deploy in the Mediterranean. Regardless of what happens going forward, this is a historic victory of great proportions for the Russian Federation. Russia today has suddenly become the encouraging voice the global community is impatiently waiting to hear. The following picture from Geneva, Switzerland says it all -

In a world reeling under the combined weight of the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance, Russia today has become the voice of sanity and the hope of many nations around the world.

Why the sudden and drastic change of course by Washington?

Not only did Washington suddenly pull back from attacking Syria after so much military preparation and threatening rhetoric, American officials are now also doing the unthinkable - they are signaling their willingness to sit at the negotiation table with Tehran. Something very serious must have made Western/Zionist war planners stop, take a big step back, reassess the situation they are in and see risks not worth taking. At this point we can only speculate as to what happened. And speaking of speculation: Some of you may recall that on September 3, Russia's military high command strongly rebuked the US and Israel for having carried-out an unannounced test launch of two ballistic missiles over the eastern Mediterranean Sea -

Were US and Israeli officials so irresponsible that they broke away from military protocol and conducted an unannounced missile test in a region of the world that was on the verge of an imminent war? Were Washington and Tel Aviv playing with fire at a time when tensions in the region were extremely high and at a time when the armed forces of various opposing nations were on military high alert? Were they so reckless that they may have risked starting a war by accident?

Or was there something else to the story about the missile test.

Several days after this curious incident, Lebanon's Al Manar news agency, quoting from another Arabic language news source, produced an English-language article in which it reported that the missile launch in question was in reality the initial salvo of the aerial attack against Syria. According to this report, the attack was quickly neutralized by Russian military assets stationed in or near the region -

Now, there is some speculation that a plasma-based weapons system was used by Russia to bring down the US/Israeli missiles. The following is some information about this relatively new technology in warfare -

Until recently, Russian scientists used plasma generation to provide conventional military aircraft with stealth capabilities. The technology in question now seems to have matured. There are some indicators today that plasma weapons are being used for anti-missile defense by the Russian military. Possibly related to this plasma air defense system may be the following atmospheric phenomenon seen in the skies over Norway in 2009 -

Although Russian officials at the time claimed that the unusual lights were the result of a failed ballistic missile launch by a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea, many observers remained unsatisfied with the explanation. There have been many failed ballistic missile tests throughout the years, yet 2009 was the first time such a heavenly light display was observed. Therefore, there had to be another explanation. It should be noted that a similar light spiral was also seen in the sky over Syria, Lebanon and Israel during the summer of 2012. Was this also a failed Russian ballistic missile launch over the Middle East? I don't think so -

These may certainly have been atmospheric experiments or tests carried-out by plasma weapons.

Therefore, were the September 3 missile launches a limited, initial strike to assess Syria's air defenses and to assess reactions from Moscow and Tehran? Did Moscow decide to debut their new weapon system by bringing down the missiles? After all, Russian military officials were publicly claiming they would come to Bashar Assad's aid in the event of an attack and Bashar Assad was publicly stating that he was not expecting an attack by the US. Moreover, there had been closed-door meetings between Western and Russian officials in which Russian officials were said to have threatened against any military action against Syria. The following two articles may shed some light on the matter -

The Al Manar report about the September 3 incident makes the astonishing claim that Washington began seeking ways of putting a stop to its military operations against Syria immediately after its ballistic missiles were brought down into the sea by Russian forces. Some curious comments made by President Putin during a meeting back in March, 2012 may be a clue -

I would like to emphasize that this is all speculation based on information provided by one news source from Lebanon. The report in question may very well be clever psy-ops (psychological warfare) put out by the Syrian government.

But, as previously mentioned, something very serious must have happened to have stopped Washington. The thing that made them call off their attack must have been more important than what warmongers in Washington wanted, more important than what Israeli, Saudi and Turkish officials wanted and more important than having the US look powerless against Bashar Assad's government. Let's remember that American hype (i.e. the way the US is perceived around the world) is one of the most important strategic aspects of Washingtonian politics. In fact, American hype drives much of Washington's power and influence around the world. Therefore, backing down from attacking Syria - especially at a time when being opposed by Moscow - was something Washington would not have done - unless it was faced with something very ominous, something that military officials in the US saw as a serious danger. Pulling back from a military strike against Syria made Washington look indecisive, weak and in the eyes of its bloodthirsty allies, treacherous. No matter how one looks at it, this was a very serious blow for imperial officials in Washington.

If there are any elements within the Al Manar report that are true to any degree, that is if any form of direct Russian military intervention stopped a Western attack against Syria, it would fully explain Washington's last minute reversal. A military incident involving Russia would fully explain John Kerry's unexpected "off the cuff remark" which was immediately seized upon by Russian officials and led to the unexpected agreement reached between Moscow and Washington in Geneva, Switzerland. From day one, the agreement in question seemed to have been choreographed, Washington had suddenly lost its appetite for war.

I personally think a direct Russian military intervention or perhaps a very stern warning from Russia's military high command made Washington back down. Knowing the imperial hubris of American officials, I am pretty sure that Washington then asked Moscow for a face saving way of getting out of the ordeal. Thus, the agreement in Geneva. This is eerily similar to the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. While US officials and the news press was jubilantly stating that the Soviet Union had backed-off and was to pull its nuclear missiles out of Cuba as a result of strong US military resolve, they of course failed to mention that Washington had secretly agreed on pulling its nuclear missile out of Turkey in exchange. In Washingtonian politics, and by extension in American culture, the way something looks (i.e. public impression) is more important than substance or reality.

Nevertheless, what this all ultimately means is that the imminent military attack against Syria has been called-off, at least for the time being. Even if temporarily, this is a very good development for the region, and the global community can thank the Russian Bear for it.

However, a delay or cancellation in the attack simply means Western powers will simply go back to placing emphasis on arming Bashar Assad's enemies within Syria with the hopes of bleeding the nation slowly. As I have previously mentioned, their primary long-term plan is to omit Damascus from the region's political calculus by turning Syria into a failed state similar to what they have done with Iraq. Western officials realize that with Bashar Assad's government out of the way, Lebanon's Hezbollah will eventually collapse. Without obstacles such as Bashar Assad and the Hezbollah, Iran will ultimately become the main focus of the Anglo-American-Franco-Zionist-Turco-Wahhabist alliance. Therefore, the agenda against Syria is simply too large, too involved, too important and too far far down the road to be abandoned at this stage.

Putting aside the Iranian factor, there is also a greater Western/Zionist agenda to break-up Middle Eastern nations into smaller, more manageable pieces. We see this long term, strategic plan for the region fully expressed in a recent article featured in one of the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance's most prominent propaganda outlets -

Regardless of what happens going forward, however, this unexpected respite will at least give Bashar Assad's government, the Hezbollah and Iran more time to extrapolate, prepare, strengthen and counteract.

The importance of Russia

The Battle for Damascus has shown the global community, quite vividly, the great importance of the Russian Bear on the global stage. And we Armenians in particular are seeing (or should be seeing) the paramount importance of having Russian boots on the ground in Armenia.

In a world reeling under a unipolar political paradigm for well over twenty years now, Russia's rise as a superpower projecting its interests upon the global stage is a very welcome relief. The global community has long been brutalized under the boot of the Anglo-American-Zionist order. The rise of Russia is providing us the bipolarity in global politics we desperately need. For a true 'multipolarity' in global politics, I also hope to see nations such as China, India, Iran and Brazil rise to global prominence as well. For now, however, it's only the Russian Federation that has been able and willing to stand up to the political West.

Syria has thus far been a victory of great proportions for the Russian Federation. Making Washington back-off from attacking Syria (even if temporarily) was a victory the kind of which Moscow has not enjoyed in several decades. Let's hope Moscow can now effectively exploit the new realities it has managed to create on the ground in the Middle East by further strengthening Bashar Assad's regime and by further entrenching Russian military assets in and around the Syrian port city of Tartus.

On the diplomatic front, Moscow needs to be unrelenting for it now has the momentum, the initiative as well as the moral authority in the Middle East.

The recent summit at Valdai Club may have been one of the ways with which Moscow may be attempting to take advantage of its recent diplomatic successes -

The great Czar of Eurasia gave perhaps the most important speech of his career at the tenth annual gathering at Valdai lake in Russia. The timing, coming on the heels of Moscow's historic victory in Syria was highly significant. The venue, at the tenth anniversary of the Valdai Club (where Russian experts and guests from around the world meet to discuss political matters) was highly significant. And also highly significant was Vladimir Putin's profound message to the world: He spoke candidly about the dangers of Western Globalism, ultraliberalism, multicultralism and unipolarity in global politics, and he underscored the importance of traditional Christian values and national revival.Recent developments on the world stage should again be reminding us Armenians of the cruel and unforgiving nature of the region in which Armenia is unfortunately located. We Armenians should be reminded that the obsessive pursuit of "democracy" (as per Western demands nonetheless) is a dangerous red-herring for there are much more important tasks that our underdeveloped and inexperienced nation needs to take on before it can afford to play around with such nonsense. Recent years should also have shown us that Western institutions (e.g. IMF, World Bank, USAID, NED) are a grave threat for politically inexperienced, underdeveloped and economically vulnerable nations.While Western officials keep our Democracy Now(!) idiots preoccupied with silly things like "gay rights", "civil society" and "free elections", keeping Armenia politically isolated and economically stagnant has been their ultimate goal. Therefore, it would be wise to look past the lofty rhetoric of Washingtonian whores such as Raffi Hovannisian, Vartan Oskanian and Paruyr Hayrikian and assess their role in Armenia within the following geostrategic context -

The ultimate goal of high level Western officials continues to be either the strangling of Armenia (through their NATO-member's blockade) or its severing from Russia (through their political activists in Armenia). Thus, it could be said that the West's ultimate intention is to either destroy Armenia or place it under the mercy of their Turkic and Islamic allies. Therefore, by extension, Armenian political activists that push a Western agenda in Armenia are ultimately working to destroy the nation - whether they realize it or not. After all, the main reason why Western powers are interested in the south Caucasus to begin with is their desire to contain Moscow and Tehran. Moreover, without Russian and Iranian presence in the region, Western powers can freely exploit Central Asian gas and oil deposits. In short, Western officials know that without a strong Russian presence in and around the Caucasus, the very strategic region in question will easily become their playground.We Armenians, however, need to be sober enough to realize that without a Russian presence in the south Caucasus there won't be an Armenian presence in the south Caucasus.I reiterate: While Armenia's military is its tactical advantage in the south Caucasus, Armenia's alliance with the Russian Federation must be utilized as its strategic advantage on the global stage. Therefore, Armenian lobbyists, activists, politicians, businessmen and military leaders must be a constant presence within the walls of the Kremlin. This effort needs to be pan-national in nature, an effort involving the Armenian Diaspora of western Europe, the Middle East and the US. In this dog-eat-dog world, we Armenians need to be very grateful that we have a very powerful regional ally like the Russian Federation. We must be very grateful that a neighboring superpower is sincerely interested in Armenia's survival as a nation-state in a very hostile and unforgiving environment. We Armenians must therefore do everything in our power to exploit this opportunity.

The Great Czar of Eurasia has spoken

In what mounted to be a shock-wave felt around the world, the New York Times, one of the most important propaganda organs in the Western world, featured an Op-Ed column written by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his commentary, coming on the heels of Moscow's success in Syria, the great leader of the Russian Federation directly appealed to the American people. His message was essentially that of peace, caution and political rationality.

He also made a very powerful closing comment: He warned against American arrogance by rebuking "American exceptionalism", the widely held notion amongst Americans that the US plays a special, almost sacred role in the world. By writing this, President Putin was basically telling Americans what the global community had been thinking for many years but was too afraid to express it.

Needless to say, Putin's message was not well received, to say the least.

Watching politicians, journalists and television pundits in the US now spew vitriol against Putin is expected of a people this arrogant, this ignorant yet also unfortunately this dangerous. They seem to have united in their hatred of Putin. In my opinion, they hate Putin because they - instinctually - fear him. They fear him because in him they see their eventual demise. Perhaps they see images like this in their dreams -

In short: It is the nightmarish fairytale in which the US is a sacred entity, a nation blessed by God. It is the nightmarish fairytale in which US officials are believed to be the world's moral authority. It is the devilish idea that whatever the US does it does for the betterment of humanity. In other words, American exceptionalism is ultimately about maintaining Washington's role as the top predator on the global food chain. This nightmarishly arrogant fairytale is propagated by America's imperial elite (through social engineering tools such as Hollywood and mainstream news media) as a means of conditioning the empire's mindless masses towards geostrategic ends.

By its nature and character, American exceptionalism is eerily similar to the ancient Roman belief that Rome was bringing civilization to barbaric lands; the Vatican's belief until recent times that it was bringing God to infidels; the messianic belief amongst the English that the British Empire was bringing civilization to primitive regions of the world; and the equally absurd and ultra-narcissistic belief amongst Jews that they are God's "chosen" people.

The monster known as American exceptionalism was basically born during the Second World War when the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance united with the Soviet Union to defeat National Socialism in Europe, and it grew into adulthood at the fall of the Soviet Union, which left the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance as the world's only superpower. In other words, American exceptionalism reached maturity at a time when the global governance had become unipolar and Washington was sitting firmly on top of the world. Now that the monster in question seems to have reached senility, I hope to see it die very soon. Thankfully, its first death knell may have already come, compliments of the Russian Bear.

More on the dangers of American exceptionalism, Globalism, Democracy and the Political West, please revisit the following blog commentary -

For every action there is a reaction. It's the cycle of nature. When evil grows in the world, saviors appear. Russia's Vladimir Putin is that savior. The Russian nation today is - perhaps literally - doing God's work on earth. In a world drowning under the collective weight of Western powers and their Zionist benefactors, Russia has become the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel called Globalism.

Now that Putin has spoken and the world has taken note of Russia's rise as a global power, we can all expect a flood of commentaries and analysis from around the world either welcoming the Bear's resurgence or cursing its return. And I have no doubt that certain circles will once again begin conspiring to kill the Bear. After all, they loved Gorbachev because he killed the Russian Bear. They adored Yeltsin because he allowed them to feed on the carcass of the Russian Bear. They now fear and hate Putin because be resurrected the Russian Bear.

America's decline as a hegemon

Some political commentators in the West are already predicting Washington's exit from the Middle East as a result of its recent setback in Syria. I do not agree with their shortsighted notion that Washington will be made to exist the region merely as a result of not getting its way with regards to Bashar Assad. Washington is too deeply entrenched in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to be pushed out of the region quite that easily. Having said that, with momentum fully behind it, if Moscow continues to put pressure on Washington and wisely exploits its recent gains in Syria, Russia may be returning to the Middle East in grand style.

After a twenty year absence, Moscow is now in a very good position where it can become Washington's main antagonist in the Middle East once again. This is good news for secularism in the region, this is good news for the region's Christian populations, this is good news for Arab nationalism, this is good news for Palestinians, and this is good news for Iran. In the big picture, this is good news for the world. Therefore, I am looking forward to the return of the Russian Bear to the Middle East, I am looking forward to Cold War II -

Although Moscow began signaling that its was a global contender several years into Vladimir Putin's presidency, Russia's return as a stabilizing power in the world was first fully felt during the summer of 2008 when it quite effortlessly defeated Georgia's US, European, Turkish and Israeli backed military dictatorship and liberated Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the bloody clutches of the Western-backed dictator in Tbilisi. Moscow's astounding success at the time spawned a great number of Russophobic commentaries as well as some somber analysis in the West. The following is just a sampling from around the time in question -

Russia has managed to roll back most of the 1990s era Western advances throughout Eurasia in recent years. Moscow has secured its strategic ties with Armenia. Moscow has deepened it relations with Iran. Moscow has deepened its relations with China. Moscow has secured its hegemony over central Asian republics. Moscow has seen Russia-friendly governments come to fore in Georgia and in the Ukraine. Moscow has managed to hold Azerbaijan as an energy hostage. Finally, Moscow has secured Europe's and Turkey's energy dependency.

But Russia's recent role in Syria has propelled Moscow's international prestige to new heights. Who today dares imagine a world without the presence of the Russian Federation?

The Soviet Union may have been backwards and aggressive in many respects, but the political West is evil in many ways. It's high time to wake-up and see the political West for what it is. Being stupid during the Cold War was somehow excusable because there seemed to be something more ominous on the other side of the so-called iron curtain. Being stupid today, in this age of information and awakening is totally inexcusable!

Russia's rise as a global power has coincided with America's waning power and influence around the world. The American mystique, the American hype carefully crafted by a wide ranging, multifaceted PR campaign during the years following the Second World War and refined into a monster of global proportions during the post-Soviet years is gradually crumbling today -

With their victory over National Socialism (a system of government that had threatened their very existence) and the emergence of "evil" Communists in the east, their financial agenda was easily implemented and the "Western model" was more-or-less imposed upon the so-called "free world". The post war years essentially gave the financial and political elite in the West a freehand to do whatever they pleased.

But the years of infallibility, political impunity and opulent living for Western powers are fast coming to an end.

A lot has changed in recent years: The Anglo-American establishment has lost its humanitarian mask; The European Union has overgrown and is terminally ill; China is fast emerging as a superpower; Russia has reemerged as a global power; Iran is emerging as a regional power; Brazil and India are making great headway; and the US, once looked up to by much of the world is now feared and hated worldwide.

The hegemony of the US Dollar and the global paradigm created at Bretton Woods towards the end of the Second World War is slowly coming to an end. A new, east-leaning world order will be born in the coming decades. Yet another, domestic sign of America's decline is the political crisis currently being witnessed within Washington. Although it sounds a bit more ominous than it actually is, the partial shutting down of the US government - essentially do to political infighting within the nation's two party elitist system - is nevertheless another sign that America is a civilization in decline and the days when Washington reigned supreme in the world is long gone.

Yes, as incredible as it seems, the world's greatest, wealthiest and most powerful nation is being shut down due to political infighting and money problems. But Americans need not worry - money problems or no money problems - the growing police state apparatus in the US (perhaps the fastest growing sector in the nation) continues to function as well as it ever has.

Americans, long asleep as a result of mindless entertainment, centuries of secure borders, a government controlled news media, proliferation of prescription drugs and a school curriculum that is designed to dumb-down society, are slowly waking up to realize that as they comfortably slept their nation was usurped by special interest groups and turned into a rampaging imperial power and a massive police state - that is currently on the verge of bankruptcy. It's only a matter of time before the social fabric of American society (already weakened by imperial wars, fiscal waste, government corruption, sexual decadence, materialism, individualism, Wall Street banksters, special interests groups, ultra-liberalism, Holocaust worship, multiculturalism and third world immigration) is fully torn apart.

As bad as the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse was for former Soviet people's, the chaotic aftermath of the Soviet collapse will look mild in comparison of the sociopolitical hell awaiting American society when the federal system in the US eventually falls apart.

Although American politicians are in denial, political observers around the world, including American ones, have began talking about the decline of American hegemony. And some Americans are now even soul searching -

Mark my words, America's decline will ultimately be blamed on Barack Obama, the house negro relegated by the empire's elite to the task of peddling wars to the American public. After all, blaming the blackman is natural. In fact, blaming the blackman is quintessentially the American way. Therefore, Barack Obama will be the scapegoat for most, if not all of America's failings henceforth. Taking a quick look at some of the hate rhetoric being expressed against him by many in the US today, it's obvious that the process has already begun. Let's see where the process will lead.

For nearly ten years I have been publicly claiming that Russia is the last front against Anglo-American imperialism, Western Globalism, Islamic extremism, Jewish Zionism and Pan-Turkism. For nearly ten years I have been sternly warning those who would listen about the corrosive toxicity of Western Globalism. In a world reeling under the combined weight of the Anglo-American-Zionist global order and Western Globalism, the rise of the Russian state as a Slavic/Christian nation imposing its political will on the global stage will eventually prove to have saved classical European/western civilization, apostolic Christianity and the traditional nation-state from destruction.

I am glad to report that the Russian Federation is living up to its expectations.

ArevordiSeptember, 2013

***

A Plea For Caution From Russia

By Vladimir Putin

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted
me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders.
It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication
between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood
against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once,
and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international
organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such
devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and
peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the
veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United
Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the
stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of
Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is
possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take
military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong
opposition from many countries and major political and religious
leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and
escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s
borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of
terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the
Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further
destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire
system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict
between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are
few champions of democracy in Syria.
But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all
stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has
designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,
fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal
conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one
of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of
militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our
deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience
acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved
on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia
has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a
compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian
government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations
Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s
complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international
relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we
must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international
law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the
Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations
Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every
reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition
forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who
would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are
preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in
foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in
America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world
increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying
solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan
“you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling,
and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw.
Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war
continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw
an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would
want to repeat recent mistakes. No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons,
civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children,
whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world
reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law,
then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing
number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is
logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with
talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is
being eroded. We must stop using the language of force and return to
the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few
days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international
community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to
place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent
destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I
welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with
Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we
agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in
June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations. If we can
avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in
international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our
shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical
issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by
growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the
nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on
American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what
makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”

It is
extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small
countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and
those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too.
We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must
not forget that God created us equal.

Putin’s article in the September 11 New York Times has the stuck pigs squealing. The
squealing stuck pigs are just who you thought they would be–all those
whose agendas and profits would be furthered by an attack on Syria by
the obama Stasi regime. Included among the squealing stuck pigs are Human Rights Watch bloggers who seem to be financed out of the CIA’s back pocket.

Does any institution remain that has not been corrupted by Washington’s money?

Notice
that the reason Putin is being criticized is that he has blocked the
obama regime from attacking Syria and slaughtering countless numbers of
Syrians in the name of human rights. The stuck pigs are outraged that
obama’s war has been blocked. They were so much looking forward to the
mass slaughter that they believe would advance their profits and
agendas.

Most
of Putin’s critics are too intellectually challenged to comprehend that
Putin’s brilliant and humane article has left Putin the leader of the
free world and defender of the rule of law and exposed obama for what he
is–the leader of a rogue, lawless, unaccountable government committed
to lies and war crimes.

Putin,
being diplomatic, was very careful in his criticism of obama’s
September 10 speech in which obama sought to justify Washington’s
lawlessness in terms of “American exceptionalism.” Obama, attempting to
lift his criminal regime by the bootstraps up into the moral heavens,
claimed that United States government policy is “what makes America
different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”

What
obama told Americans is exactly what Hitler told the Germans. The
Russians, having borne more than anyone else the full weight of the
German war machine, know how dangerous it is to encourage people to
think of themselves as exceptional, unbound by law, the Geneva
Conventions, the UN Security Council, and humane concerns for others.
Putin reminded obama that “God created us equal.”

If
Putin had wanted to give obama the full rebuke that obama deserves,
Putin could have said: “obama is correct that the policy of the US
government is what makes the US exceptional. The US is the only country
in the world that has attacked 8 countries in 12 years, murdering and
dispossessing millions of Muslims all on the basis of lies. This is not
an exceptionalism of which to be proud.”

Putin is obviously more than a match for the immoral, low grade
morons that Americans put into high office. However, Putin should not
underestimate the mendacity of his enemies in Washington. Putin warned
that the militants that Washington is breeding in the Middle East are an
issue of deep concern. When these militants return to their own
countries, they spread destabilization, as when extremists used by the
US in the overthrow of Libya moved on to Mali.

The
destabilization of other countries is precisely the main aim of
Washington’s wars in the Middle East. Washington intends for
radicalization of Muslims to spread strife into the Muslim populations
of Russia and China. Washington’s propaganda machine will then turn
these terrorists into “freedom fighters against oppressive Russian and
Chinese governments,” and use Human Rights Watch and other
organizations that Washington has penetrated and corrupted to denounce
Russia and China for committing war crimes against freedom fighters. No
doubt, chemical weapons attacks will be orchestrated, just as they have
been in Syria.

If
Washington’s NATO puppet states wake up in time, the warmongers in
Washington can be isolated, and humanity could be spared WWIII.

“The European race’s last
three hundred years of evolutionary progress have all come down to
nothing but four words: selfishness, slaughter, shamelessness and
corruption.” Yan Fu

It
only took the rest of the world 300 years to catch on to the evil that
masquerades as “western civilization,” or perhaps it only took the rise
of new powers with the confidence to state the obvious. Anyone doubtful
of America’s responsibility for the evil needs to read The Untold
History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.

The
“New American Century” proclaimed by the neoconservatives came to an
abrupt end on September 6 2013 at the G20 meeting in Russia. The
leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not
believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US
government attacks Syria without UN authorization.

Putin told the assembled world
leaders that the chemical weapons attack was “a provocation on behalf of
the armed insurgents in hope of the help from the outside, from the
countries which supported them from day one.” In other words, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Washington–the axis of evil. China,
India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in
affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the
approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.”

In other words, if you defy the world, obama, you are a war criminal.

The
entire world is waiting to see if the Israel Lobby can push obama into
the role of war criminal. Many are betting that Israel will prevail
over the weak american president, a cipher devoid of all principle. A
couple of decades ago before the advent of the american sheeple, one of
the last tough Americans, Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared that “no US
president can stand up to Israel.” America’s highest ranking military
officer could not get an honest investigation of the Israeli attack on
the USS Liberty.

We are yet to see an american president who can stand up to Israel. Or, for that matter, a Congress that can. Or a media.

The
obama regime tried to counter its smashing defeat at the G20 Summit by
forcing its puppet states to sign a joint statement condemning Syria.
However the puppet states qualified their position by stating that they
opposed military action and awaited the UN report.

Most
of obama’s bought-and-paid-for “supporters” are impotent, powerless.
For example obama counts the UK as a supporting country because of the
personal support of the discredited UK prime minister, david cameron,
despite the fact that cameron was repudiated by the British Parliament
in a vote that prohibits British participation in another of
Washington’s war crimes. So, although cameron cannot bring the British
people and the British government with him, obama counts the UK as a
supporter of obama’s attack on Syria. Clearly, this is a desperate count
of “supporting countries.”

The
Turkish puppet government, which has been shooting its peacefully
demonstrating citizens down in the streets, with no protest from obama
or the Israel Lobby, supports “holding Syria accountable,” but not
itself, of course, or Washington.

The
puppet states of Canada and Australia, powerless countries, neither of
which carry one ounce of world influence, have lined up to do the
bidding of their Washington master. The entire point of having the top
government job in Canada and Australia is the payoff from Washington.

The obama cipher also claims the support of Japan and the Republic of
Korea, another two countries devoid of all diplomatic influence and
power of any kind. Helpless Japan is on the verge of being destroyed by
the Fukushima nuclear disaster, for which it has no solution. As the
radiation leaks spread into the aquifer upon which Tokyo and surrounding
areas rely, Japan is faced with the possibility of having to relocate
40 million people.

Saudi Arabia, implicated in the transfer to al-Nusra rebels of the
chemical weapons used in the attack, supports Washington, knowing that
otherwise its tyranny is toast. Even the neoconservatives headed by
obama’s shrill National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, want to overthrow
the Saudis. Obama claims also to have support from France and Germany. However
both Hollande and Merkel have stated clearly that a diplomatic solution,
not war, is their first choice and that the outcome rests on the UN.

As
for Italy and Spain’s support, both governments are hoping to be
rewarded with the Federal Reserve printing enough dollars to bail out
their indebted economies so that both governments are not overthrown in
the streets for their acquiescence to the looting of their countries by
international banksters. Like so many Western governments, those of
Italy and Spain, and, of course, Greece, support the international
banksters, not their own citizens.

The
president of the European Commission has declared that the European
Union, the central overlord over Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and
Spain, does not support a military solution to the Syrian Crisis. “The
European Union is certain that the efforts should be aimed at a
political settlement,” Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters at the G20
meeting. The EU has the power to issue arrest warrants for the heads of
EU governments that participate in war crimes.

What this reveals is that the support behind the liar obama is feeble and limited.

The
ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics
came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is
completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless
acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing
remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a
cover for self-interest and murder, and genocide.

The
West has been destroyed by its own governments, who have told too many
self-serving lies, and by its capitalist corporations, who offshored the
West’s jobs and technology to China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil,
depriving the Western governments of a tax base and the support of its
citizens.

It
is difficult to know whether citizens in the West hate their corrupt
governments any less than do Muslims, whose lives and countries have
been devastated by Western aggression, or than do citizens of third
world countries who have been impoverished by being looted by predatory
First World financial organizations.

The
idiot Western governments have pissed away their clout. There is no
prospect whatsoever of the neoconservative fantasy of US hegemony being
exercised over Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South
America, Iran. These countries can establish their own system of
international payments and finance and leave the dollar standard
whenever they wish. One wonders why they wait. The US dollar is being
printed in unbelievable quantities and is no longer qualified to be the
world reserve currency. The US dollar is on the verge of total
worthlessness.

The
G20 Summit made it clear that the world is no longer willing to go
along with the West’s lies and murderous ways. The world has caught on
to the West. Every country now understands that the bailouts offered by
the West are merely mechanisms for looting the bailed-out countries and
impoverishing the people.

In
the 21st century Washington has treated its own citizens the way it
treats citizens of third world countries. Untold trillions of dollars
have been lavished on a handful of banks, while the banks threw millions
of Americans out of their homes and seized any remaining assets of the
broken families.

US
corporations had their taxes cut to practically nothing, with few
paying any taxes at all, while the corporations gave the jobs and
careers of millions of Americans to the Chinese and Indians. With those
jobs went US GDP, tax base, and economic power, leaving Americans with
massive budget deficits, a debased currency, and bankrupt cities, such
as Detroit, which once was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.

How long before Washington shoots down its own homeless, hungry, and protesting citizens in the streets?

Washington
represents Israel and a handful of powerful organized private
interests. Washington represents no one else. Washington is a plague
upon the American people and a plague upon the world. (See http://rt.com/news/g20-against-syria-strike-527/ )

Putin the Peacemaker: The warlords of Washington hate him – which is why we should listen to him

By Justin Raymundo

The Washington know-it-alls are all atwitter over Vladimir Putin’s New York Timesop ed: their outrage is the best endorsement.
All the Very Serious People are up in arms
over the "hypocrisy" of the Russian leader for taking the US to task
for rushing to war in Syria. It was the timing that rankled them: the
foreign policy cognoscenti have only just barely gotten over their palpable disappointment when Congress and then the President backed down in the face of vocal outrage emanating from out in the cornfields. And now this!

If the revolt of the hoi polloi depresses them – how dare those un-lettered
ruffians in flyover country interfere with their fun (and their career
plans)! – the decision by the editors of the Times to publish Putin
energized their moral preening instinct and reconfirmed their conviction that
they represent humankind’s last best hope. They point to Putin’s 1999 Times
op Ed – yes, this is his second – wherein he purported to explain Russian
intervention in Chechnya – what hypocrisy, they cry! Of course, many on Twitter
made the mistake of actually linking
to this piece, in which Putin presciently speculated that Islamist radicals
might one day attack the United States:

"I ask you to put aside for a moment the dramatic news reports
from the Caucasus and imagine something more placid: ordinary New
Yorkers or Washingtonians, asleep in their homes. Then, in a flash,
hundreds perish in explosions at the Watergate, or at an apartment
complex on Manhattan’s West Side. Thousands are injured, some horribly
disfigured. Panic engulfs a neighborhood, then a nation."

A few years later, Americans didn’t have to imagine it, because
they experienced it. At the time the piece was written, however, Putin
was at pains to point out:

"Russians do not have to imagine such a calamity. More than 300 of
our citizens in Moscow and elsewhere suffered that fate earlier this
year when bombs detonated by terrorists demolished five apartment
blocks."

The Chechen rebels were and are supported by the West, and I’m not just talking
about our Russophobic media: the US and British governments have granted asylum
to the worst terrorists imaginable. When Ilya Akmadov, the Chechen rebels’ "foreign
minister," applied for asylum in America, the Department of Homeland Security
protested – the man, after all, was complicit in the slaughter of almost 200 schoolchildren
at Beslan, alongside his leader, Chechen commander Shamil Basaeyev, when Chechen
jihadists attacked a Russian school.

Ah, but "the children" don’t come into the conversation unless it serves the purposes of the foreign policy elite. That elite gave its ringing endorsement
of Akmadov’s asylum application: Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci,
Zbigniew Brzezkinski, Ted Kennedy, and of course John McCain – the
jihadists’ best friend
– all signed a letter appealing to Homeland Security, which promptly
backed down. Akmadov was not only granted asylum but also a plum
position with the misnamed "US Institute of Peace," a government-funded
entity that does its best to justify America’s wars.

Now yet another US-backed jihadist crusade is threatening Russian interests
in the region, this time in Syria: flying the black flag of Al Qaeda, they’re
slaughtering "heretics,"burning down churches, and eating the livers of Syrian government soldiers on YouTube The cause of these cuddly rebels has
been taken up by all the usual suspects, with Senator McCain carrying their
bloodstained banner in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the American
media describing them as innocuous Syrian "activists." After a months-long
campaign to come up with some alleged atrocity that would trigger US intervention
on their behalf, as in Libya – a public relations effort rife with hoaxes so
crude that not even the American media could bring themselves to fall for it
– they finally came up with a good one in Ghouta, a village outside Damascus
where someone indubitably did deploy some kind of poison gas.

The liberal moaners, led by Samantha Power, and the outright Russia-haters left over from the cold war, such as Bill Kristol and his neocon cabal,
joined hands and jabbered in unison that the US has a "responsibility
to protect" (as Power has phrased it). For well over a year, the chorus
of Washington-centered voices had been caterwauling for some "action,"
and with Ghouta the shrieking reached a crescendo: War! War! War!A visibly reluctant President Obama finally caved, and the news media drooled at the prospect of more Shock-&-Awe: any day now,
they averred, and the bombs would be flying. Oh goodie! Except they
forgot about one important factor in the equation: the American people.

The American people, in the view of this self-anointed priesthood
of Ares, are to be steadfastly ignored when it comes to foreign policy:
their ill-informed opinions only matter around election time, and then only
marginally – since both candidates usually reflect the foreign policy priesthood’s
own interventionist bias. This time, however, Americans didn’t politely defer
to their betters: against the tide of "expert" opinion, and all the
moralistic jeremiads of paid shills and other exemplars of internationalist
virtue, they rose up and delivered a resounding "No!"

And Vladimir Putin heard their cry, which he echoed and amplified in his Times
piece. Touching on all the arguments critics of US intervention gave voice to
– in Congress and on congressional phone lines – even
Max Fisher in the rabidly interventionist Washington Post had to
admit he had a point, even a fair number of points. Yes, he’s right about the
illegality of the aborted-for-now military strike, yes he is correct when he
talks about the jihadist element so prominent in the "opposition,"
and yes US intervention would risk rapid escalation and a regional conflagration,
but Fisher balked when it came to the two key points that most rankle Washington.
Putin wrote:

"No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is
every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by
opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign
patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that
militants are preparing another attack – this time against Israel –
cannot be ignored."

The Western media have already decided how their narrative is going to read,
just as they did in the run up to the Iraq war – when the "intel"
was "a slam dunk," as the then head of the CIA put it. Everyone knew
Saddam Hussein was harboring "weapons of mass destruction," and anyone
who denied it was … well, a "denialist." As it turned out, the real
denialists were in the news media, but that was then, and this is now: as someone
by the name of Muhammad Idrees
Ahmad puts it in the present context, those who wonder whether the rebels
themselves have possessed or deployed poison gas are "the
new truthers." That this smear appeared in The New Republic
– a magazine that not only accepted the Saddam-has-WMD narrative unquestioningly,
but also plumbed tirelessly for war with Iraq – is hardly shocking. And while
the public seems to be buying this war propaganda for the moment, it’s only
a matter of time before this "intel" is thoroughly debunked.

No one doubts Assad is capable
of using poison gas, given the right circumstances, i.e. given the
probability that he’d get away with it. But it’s just too much of a
coincidence that the Ghouta incident occurred at precisely the moment when UN inspectors had only just arrived in Damascus at the invitation of the Syrian regime
to verify claims the rebels had twice used poison gas – at Aleppo and
Khan al-Assal. Did they invite the inspectors just in time to witness
the "atrocity" the rebels had been waiting for and hoping would motivate
the West to intervene? Aside from the timing, there’s the fact that the
rebels had been steadily losing ground to the Syrian armed forces: there was no military reason to use gas, especially with the inspectors a few miles away.

As it is, the UN report will not deal at all with the Aleppo and Khan al-Assal incidents,
but one wonders how long the pretense of the rebels’ moral purity can
be kept up. Reports are surfacing that rebels in possession of homemade
poison gas had been arrested by the Turks
near Aleppo, and the testimony of two journalists kidnapped and held by
the rebels for months indicates the rebels were openly talking about
the Ghouta incident weeks before it happened. Add to this the 100-page Russian intelligence report
on the rebels’ use of homemade sarin gas – supplied by jihadists in
Iraq – and the Official Narrative that disdains all others as the
product of "truthers" is bound to fall apart.

Oh, those Russians, with their crazy conspiracy theories! The scoffing of the Washington know-it-alls is all over Twitter. Yet the Russians, after all, were right about Tamerlane Tsarnaev – and we were wrong. Dead wrong. Not to mention Putin saw the 9/11 attacks coming years before they occurred. What really rankles
the pundits and assembled "experts" at the Court
of King Obama, however, is the final paragraph of Putin’s missive, in
which he delivers what could be a fatal blow to their vanity:

"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked
by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the
nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American
exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America
different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’ It is extremely dangerous to encourage
people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are
big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic
traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ,
too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must
not forget that God created us equal."

The mystic doctrine of "American exceptionalism"
has long dominated the foreign policy consensus in Washington. It has
both "right" and "left" versions, but in both cases the idea is
essentially the same: John F. Kennedy gave voice to it in his 1961
Inaugural Address, when he declared the US must "pay any price, bear any burden"
in the international struggle to contain the Communist Menace in Latin
America and elsewhere. It was the rhetorical prelude to the Bay of Pigs disaster and our increasing military presence in Vietnam.

Although Communism was the bogeyman of the moment, the "pay any price
bear any burden" mentality survived the cold war: Indeed, the demise of
the old Soviet Union emboldened America’s political class to update and upgrade this exceptionalism, which supposedly gives us a divine mandate to police the
post-cold war world order in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan – and now Syria.
If any other nation arrogated this task to itself, it would be called by its
right name: imperialism. Yet that’s what "American exceptionalism"
is all about: we’re supposedly the exception to this rule.

Except we’re not, as Putin points out – and the American people agree. The
US public is often characterized as being "war weary," as if they
are slouches, selfish monsters who have put down this noble burden at the very
moment it must be taken up with fresh vigor. Yet what they are weary of is the
arrogance that engenders our foreign policy of perpetual war: the self-satisfied
smugness with which our elites weave narratives that turn out to be a passel
of lies. Americans are empire-weary because they see the corroding effects
of imperialism on their own society – the decline in living standards coupled
with the deterioration of civil liberties and the ongoing corruption of the
political class.

Putin is speaking directly to them – and the warlords of Washington hate it.
Which is why we should all of us love it.

President Obama has accepted an exit strategy from the Syria crisis
proposed by Vladimir Putin. Obama surmised that if the plan works, it
might lead to abreakthrough. In his Tuesdayspeech
to the nation last week, Obama indefinitely postponed a crucial
Congressional vote on whether to strike the Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad. No wonder: Obama most probably would have lost that vote. By
Saturday, he agreed to a deal negotiated by John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov
in Geneva.

This was hardly a glorious case of presidential crisis management.
Many influential Senators—including Democrats—would have opposed
authorizing force. The House was clearly against the President. A
majority of American voters, exhausted by the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, did not support the strike, and Congressional elections are only a year away.

Obama seemed to have climbed up the proverbial tree, and it was
Russian President Vladimir Putin who played a crucial role in providing
him a ladder to climb down—at a price. Thus, Putin, in a typical
geopolitical “judo” move, stepped closer to Obama—in order to neutralize
him politically. By providing a way out for the American president from
a perceived tight corner, Putin made himself appear more powerful. And
the optics matter as much as substance.

In a tactically impressive move, Putin, ever eager to assert Moscow’s
role in the Middle East and oppose the U.S. and her Sunni allies,
including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, offered to put Syria’s
chemical arsenal under UN control and then destroy it under
international supervision. Damascus has joined the Chemical Weapons
Convention and signaled consent to the Putin plan.

In what appears as yet another strategic blunder, Obama even elected
to forego a binding UN Security Council resolution on Syrian disarmament
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for enforcement,
while Putin may hit the geopolitical jackpot.

If the disarmament initiative succeeds, Obama will “owe” Putin.
America will be enticed to forget quickly the damage caused by the NSA
and CIA defector Edward Snowden, who received asylum in Russia. America
will remain mum as a Russian court has sentenced anticorruption crusader and whistleblower Alexei Navalny. Moscow is rife with rumors about preparations for the third trial
of jailed oil tycoon and political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It is
equally unlikely that Russia’s ambitious plans to expand the Eurasian
Union to include Armenia and Ukraine into the Customs Union will meet a
vigorous U.S. response.

Obama may not realize that Putin, a former KGB recruiting officer,
seems to have played him like a violin. Putin has demonstrated that he
is capable of stopping the world’s only superpower from using
force—making him “the go to” man, to whom many on the U.S. blacklist
will run to seek protection.

Putin will also have demonstrated that Russia, despite being seven
times smaller than the U.S. economically, and weaker militarily, is
capable of gaining impressive geopolitical results even when dealt a
poor hand. As the military operation against Assad is postponed, Putin
has increased the chances of the pro-Iranian regime’s survival, and
possibly ensured the continued presence of a modest Russian naval
facility in Tartus.

Moscow also has a growing interest in a Shia strategic belt extending
from Lebanon via Syria and Iraq to Iran, as it prevents Sunni radicals
from flooding into the North Caucasus and Central Asia—Russia’s soft
underbelly. Moscow also sent a signal that a U.S. military operation against the
Iranian nuclear program may not happen—without the UN Security
Council—i.e., the Kremlin’s—sanction. And that sanction will not be
forthcoming.

Not bad for a week’s work.

It
appears that at least for now, Russia is winning a zero-sum game—the
Kremlin’s favorite geopolitical sport. The Kremlin is boosting its
status as the great balancer of America.
This benefits Moscow—and further encourages it to stand up to America.

Ariel Cohen, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and
Eurasian Studies and International Energy Policy at the Heritage
Foundation.

With the Russian proposal on Syrian chemical weapons, the United States is being escorted out of the Middle East.

Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss
the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control
last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference. Putin sure doesn’t
care that Obama’s taking credit for the proposal, or that the
administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer. “The only reason why
we are seeing this proposal,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.”

Right, Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If
Obama wants to sell it like a Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue
that’s fine with Putin, because Putin won.

Reset with Russia was originally a strategic
priority for the Obama administration because it saw Moscow as the key
to getting Iran to come to the negotiating table. Putin, from the White
House’s perspective, was destined for the role of junior partner. Now
Putin has turned “Reset” upside down. By helping Obama out of a jam with
Syria, Putin has made himself the senior partner to whom the White
House is now beholden. Accordingly, when Putin proposes the same sort of
deal with Iran, with Russia having established its bona fides as an
interlocutor for Syria, Obama is almost certain to jump at it.

What’s unclear is whether Obama understands that
his foreign policy legacy will be to have ruined the American position
in the Middle East, our patrimony of the last seven decades. If the 1979
takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian
deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s not Iran kicking
the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but Putin.

The Syrian government has accepted
the proposal because they understand it is an empty formalism. As
everyone knows, as even all but the most obtuse White House officials
must also understand, Assad will not give up his unconventional arsenal
because he cannot. The use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb
August 21 is evidence that, contrary to the regime’s narrative, Assad
and his allies are not routing the rebels. The district that was
targeted is a strategically significant node that, among other things,
is close to the Dumayr airstrip
where the regime is supplied with direct flights from Iran. The rebels
had held the territory for over a year, thwarting repeated attempts by
Assad’s forces to retake it. Presumably, Assad calculated that given the
importance of the area it was worth testing Obama’s red line to take
it. Without chemical weapons, Assad fears he may lose the war.

But what’s even more terrifying for Assad is the
prospect that he, his family and friends, regime officials, and indeed
the entire Alawite community might lose their lives. In the event the
regime should find itself in such an existential crisis, plan B is to
withdraw from Damascus and head to the coastal mountains that make up
the historical Alawite homeland. The question for Assad then is, how to
ensure the safety of that retreat? Further, once there how are the
Alawites to defend their redoubt from a Sunni community galvanized by a
shared vendetta against Assad and his community? From Assad’s
perspective, without chemical weapons the Alawites might fall off the
face of the earth.

Who knows what the Russians told Assad? For God’s sake, just say
it’s your chemical weapons arsenal you’re turning over for safekeeping.
Send them canisters of perfume, or cat urine. The Americans just want a
deal, the president thinks he’s saving face. If the Americans are
smart, they’ll let the whole thing drop and call it a win, but knowing
them they’ll come back later and complain that you’re not keeping your
end of the bargain. No problem. We’ll stall them. And then every time
Obama whines it will remind your adversaries and U.S. allies around the
world that the Americans are empty suits, a bunch of legalistic
bureaucrats who are incapable of standing with their friends.

It’s hard not to be impressed with Putin. A man who
up until yesterday seemed merely crass, has revealed himself to be
capable of great subtlety. For years his method was so transparent, so
obvious, his vulgarities intended to appall and shock the White House.
He accused one secretary of state of plotting against him, and another
he calls a liar. He gave Edward Snowden refuge. He dispatches his thugs
to beat up LGBT teenagers. After a while, the administration learned not
to be surprised by anything Putin does. He’s a bully, smitten with his
own macho self-image. That’s all true, but now we see that Putin was
testing Obama and looking for openings.

The president’s supporters and publicists in the
press know how to package Obama’s weakness. The fear that everyone else
in the world smells emanating from him like a wounded animal is really
just humility and modesty—fitting attributes for the leader of a
superpower that needs to make amends for having meddled so long in the
affairs of others. And besides, this talk of strength and weakness is
juvenile—the world is not a schoolyard. And so Obama ignored Putin’s
slights and held his head high. This revealed to Putin Obama’s real
liability, his vanity. Obama always needs to look good. He will embrace
defeat so long as he can still imagine himself a handsome princeling.
After pushing Obama around for five years, now Putin escorts him out of
the Middle East. Here, friend, take my hand. Let me help you to the
sidelines.

As David Samuels wrote
last week, Putin’s goal is to replace the United States as the regional
power broker. Sure, Russia is less a state than a criminal enterprise
with lots of energy to sell, while the United States drives the global
economy, but so what? What good are American aircraft carriers if you
don’t have the will to use them? Putin will use anything he has to win,
while Obama is looking for a reason not to fire a few cruise missiles
into the Syrian desert. There is absolutely no chance Obama would risk a
shooting war with Iran.

The Russian proposal not only saves Obama from
having to do something about Syria, it also, and much more important,
shows the way forward with Iran. From the White House’s point of view,
its credible threat of force made Syria buckle and will similarly bring
Iran to the negotiating table. Putin has shown his bona fides as a
credible interlocutor with Damascus and will do the same with Iran.
Obama can relax now and imagine that he has finally earned his Nobel
Peace Prize and that that sound he hears is the tide of war receding.

In fact, it is the sound of American allies around
the world—the Poles and Czechs, the Japanese and the South Koreans, the
Saudis, Jordanians and Israelis, among others—gnashing their teeth. They
now see that they are on their own, and that the word of the United
States means nothing.

The civil war in Syria and the consequent threat of the superpower
attacking that part of the territory still controlled by the alliance
supporting Assad's government has given the Kremlin a unique
opportunity. At the start of the so-called Arab Spring and the
escalation in conflicts within countries governed by autocratic despots
and regimes, Russia kept its distance from the region, leaving the
Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia under the "control"
of the United States and its sole staunch ally, Israel.

Vladimir Putin's government's problems were concentrated in the Caucasus
region, specifically the so-called Chechen ethnic groups, hegemonized
by Al Qaeda-linked fundamentalism. The threat against the regime in
Syria and the composition of its Alawite government led by the Assad
clan, with leading members of the Ba'ath Party (a secular
politico-military faction), supported by about 35% of the minority
groups in the country, placed the old Tsarist Empire at a crossroads.
Either it would have to throw itself into the conflict, serving as a
shield against the virtually unilateral actions of the USA, or it would
have to focus entirely on resuming its hegemony in Eastern Europe,
advancing its area of ​​influence over central Europe and projecting
Gazprom through the Nord Stream pipeline into the Baltic Sea.

If Putin's cabinet were to abandon its last ally in the Middle East to
its own devices, that would mean losing its last naval base in the
Mediterranean (in the Aegean Sea, to be precise), located in the port of
Tartus, the second-biggest in Syria. When part of the 6th Fleet of the
US Navy positioned itself to bomb Bashir al-Assad's facilities by
launching Tomahawk missiles, the Russian warships sailed out to them, by
way of deterrent.

Besides the naval manoeuver, Russia has threatened not to recognize
Assads responsibility as author of a war crime in his use of gas against
the population of the suburbs of Damascus. By raising suspicions about
Saudi Arabia (as financer of the chemical weapon), it threatened to
destroy the Saud dynasty, US allies and partners of the Bush family. In
parallel, it went ahead with its diplomatic action, seeking a
multilateral solution through the strengthening of the UN Security
Council, where it has the power of veto.

The Russian advance comes at the same time as hesitation from the White
House, which lacks congressional support for the attack and does not
have the support of public opinion. The two military allies of the
United States in Europe/NATO - France and Britain - reviewed their
position to the extent that parliaments and the expressed will of the
voters said they were against any possible bombing action against Syria.

The checkmate against the USA came shortly after the meeting of the G-20
in St. Petersburg, in early September 2013. When the Syrian regime
accepted the Russian solution, delivering its chemical arsenal into UN
hands for safeguarding, Russia moved up in the International System, as
the only country in the world with the real conditions to become a
superpower.

The Kremlin's 11th-hour initiative to forestall Western military
intervention against its client, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has
vaulted Russia to the center of the global stage in its most dramatic
diplomatic coup in years.

For President Vladimir Putin,
who has publicly lamented Russia's fading influence and the woes of
what he saw as the U.S.'s dangerous global hegemony since he came to
power in 2000, the turnabout is especially sweet, two weeks after it
looked as if Moscow was running out of options. But the Syria
initiative, which calls for bringing Damascus's arsenal of chemical
weapons under international control,
has risks for Moscow, which now must ensure that its often-recalcitrant
ally is cooperative enough to avoid sabotaging the process.

Taking their cue from Mr. Putin's op-ed article in the New York Times
last week, in which he lectured Americans on the failings of U.S.
policy in the Middle East, Russian officials have been jubilant for
days.

"Putin is the one getting applause for preventing war," read a
comment over the weekend on the Twitter account of Alexei Pushkov, a
senior member of the ruling party and chairman of the International
Affairs Committee in parliament. "Obama didn't convince many people.
Half the world is with Russia in this tug of war."

Mr. Putin sought to underline that on Friday, meeting in Kyrgyzstan
with the leaders of China, Iran and a number of Central Asian countries
for a regularly scheduled summit of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, a Sino-Russian-led security bloc. The leaders all hailed
Moscow's handling of the crisis. Iranian President Hasan Rouhani invited
Mr. Putin to try his hand at easing the standoff between Tehran and the
West over Iran's nuclear program.

"Now is the best opportunity for new steps on your part," Mr. Rouhani said at the start of the meeting.

The effusive praise from around the world was repeated in the
Kremlin-controlled media. Though a client since the Soviet era, Syria
itself isn't a major issue in Russia, polls show. But nostalgia for the
great-power status enjoyed in the Soviet era is a powerful force across
the political spectrum there.

Since he returned to the presidency in 2012, Mr. Putin has sought to
capitalize on this sentiment with a consistent campaign of
anti-Westernism inside Russia, increasingly portraying Moscow as the
center of a conservative civilization at odds with the U.S. and Europe.

Until now, however, most of the Kremlin's efforts to reassert itself
internationally were confined to relations with its former Soviet
neighbors. Initiatives further afield, such as proposals for easing
tensions over Iran's nuclear program or grand plans for European
security, got little traction.

"Russia has been in the best case a marginal actor," said a senior European diplomat.

"There's been nothing like this before," said Georgy Mirsky, a Middle
East specialist at the state-run Institute for World Economy and
International Relations in Moscow. "Russia has won," he added. "America
didn't so much lose as it was humiliated."

Mr. Mirsky said the Kremlin appears to have seen Western ambivalence
about military action as an opening, catching the Obama administration
off guard. Days before the initiative was announced, Mr. Putin lambasted
the U.S. in undiplomatic language even by his brusque standards,
accusing Secretary of State John Kerry of "lying" to Congress about the extent of al Qaeda influence among the Syria opposition.

On Saturday, Mr. Kerry publicly thanked Mr. Putin "for his
willingness to pick up on the possibility of negotiating an end to
Syrian weapons of mass destruction."

"Putin can now present himself as a great peacemaker—his acolytes in
Russia are calling for him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—and the
leader of a country that has reasserted its "great power" status
alongside the United States," said Mark Kramer, professor of Cold War
studies at Harvard University. Moscow remains committed to protecting
the Assad regime from being held responsible for using chemical weapons,
or for the roughly 100,000 deaths in the civil war, he said.

While Moscow's assertiveness did unsettle some U.S. diplomats, U.S.
officials say the Kremlin has, at least temporarily, gone from being
part of the problem in Syria to part of a possible solution. The idea of
pushing Damascus to give up its chemical weapons
had been discussed by U.S. and Russian officials for at least a year,
diplomats say, but Moscow appeared unwilling or unable to force the
Assad regime to comply. The current deal has changed that.

"The agreement reached [Saturday] is a win for both Moscow and
Washington—provided that it is implemented, which remains far from
certain," said Steven Pifer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and a former ambassador. "Implementation could well require the Russians
to lean on Damascus if the Syrians drag their feet. Is Moscow prepared
to do that?"

For the moment, the Kremlin has bought precious time for the Assad
regime to continue pressuring the opposition on the battlefield and
likely won new loyalty from its client. Though Moscow decries supplies
of arms to the rebels, it has kept up a steady flow of sophisticated
weapons to the regime.

"Even if in the end, Bashar al-Assad loses and he's driven out or
killed, Putin won't look like a loser," said Mr. Mirsky. "The propaganda
line will be that we weren't defending him, we were defending the
principle" of nonintervention and international law.

In addition to demonstrating the limits of U.S. global power, the
Kremlin is eager to show others in the region that it can be a powerful
player there, officials say. Containing the Syrian conflict—even if that
means it goes on for years—is also an important priority, given
Russia's concern about the spread of Islamic extremism, a problem Moscow
faces on its own territory as well.

The National Interest: The American Public's Foreign-Policy Reawakening

Political analysts over the next year or so, and historians well into
the future, are likely to point to the fall of 2013 as a fundamental
inflection point in American politics. That period, they will say, is
when the American people forced a major new direction in American
foreign policy. Before the events of this fall, the country’s electorate
largely delegated foreign policy to its political elite—and largely
supported that elite as it projected American military power with more
abandon than the country had ever before seen. Even as the government
steadfastly expanded the range of international problems that it said
required U.S. military action, the electorate accepted that expanded
international role and that increasingly promiscuous use of force.

Those days are gone now. The American people conveyed emphatically,
in public opinion surveys and in communications to their representatives
in Washington, that they did not want their country to launch air
strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Not even if Assad
used chemical weapons against his people, as they generally believe he
did. Not even if the strikes are limited in magnitude and duration, as
Obama promises they will be. Not even if the president of the United
States says the strikes are in the country’s national interest. They
don’t buy it, and they don’t want it.

Poll numbers in recent days have demonstrated this turnaround in
stark fashion. In addition, congressional reluctance to support the
president’s authorization request was growing inexorably. The New York Timesreported[3] Tuesday that the president was "losing ground in both parties in recent days," while the Wall Street Journal said support for Mr. Obama’s position on Syria "was slipping in Congress[4]."
If Russia’s Vladimir Putin hadn’t interrupted the U.S. political
process with his call for a negotiated end to Assad’s possession of
chemical weapons, it seems inevitable that the president would have
suffered a devastating political defeat in Congress. That’s still the
likely outcome if it ever comes to a vote.

And there’s no doubt that his difficulties in Congress are driven in part by recent poll numbers, which are startling. Gallup reported recently[5],
based on polling between September 3-4, that American support for the
Syria attack was the lowest at this stage in a prospective military
action seen over the past twenty years—36 percent, compared to 59
percent for the 2003 Iraq invasion, 82 percent for the initial
Afghanistan action in 2001, 62 percent for the Persian Gulf War of 1991
and 43 percent for the Kosovo bombing of 1999.

But the 36 percent support number in the Gallup poll quickly was
overtaken by lower numbers in subsequent polls. A later CNN poll showed[6]
that nearly 70 percent of respondents believed it wasn’t in the U.S.
interest to get involved in Syria’s civil war, and a slightly higher
percentage said airstrikes wouldn’t achieve any significant goals for
the United States. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from September 5-9 pegged[7] support for U.S. involvement in Syria at just 16 percent, down from 20 percent just a week earlier.

In a survey reported in Tuesday’s New York Times, the paper asked[8]
broader questions about American foreign policy, and the results were
revealing. Fully 62 percent of respondents said the United States
shouldn’t take a leading role in trying to solve foreign conflicts,
while only 34 percent said it should. On a question whether the United
States should intervene to turn dictatorships into democracies, 72
percent said no. Only 15 percent said yes. The Times said that represents the highest level of opposition recorded by the paper in various polls over the past decade.

To understand the significance of these numbers, along with the
political pressures building on lawmakers on the issue, it’s important
to note that American political sentiment doesn’t change willy-nilly,
for no reason. What we’re seeing is the emergence within the American
political consciousness of a sense that the country’s national leaders
have led it astray on foreign policy. And, given the country’s
foreign-policy history of the past two decades, it isn’t surprising that
the people would begin to nudge their leaders with a certain amount of
agitation.

They were told in late 1992 that the U.S. incursion into Somalia was
for the benign purpose of merely feeding starving people. A year later
that adventure ended in a disaster for America and a major embarrassment
for President Bill Clinton, who had expanded the Somalia mission. The
American people were told they had to invade Iraq because it had weapons
of mass destruction and serious ties to Al Qaeda. Neither was true.
They were told that the Iraqi people would embrace some form of
Western-style democracy once Saddam Hussein was out of the way. Didn’t
happen. They were told that Hosni Mubarak’s departure in Egypt would
lead to the emergence of democratic institutions there. They got, first,
an Islamist government through election, then another military coup of
the kind that has characterized that country and region for decades.
They were told the Libyan people would be better off without Muammar
el-Qaddafi, and the result was societal chaos, with Qaddafi’s weapons
streaming into the hands of Islamist radicals (and being used against
U.S. diplomatic personnel). They were told to embrace "globalization,"
and it led to the worst economic dislocation since the Great Depression.

In other words, the country’s elites—of both political parties and
across the political spectrum—have been wrong on just about everything
they have done since the end of the Cold War. And the voters, as a
collective, aren’t stupid. They know that these fiascos have been the
products of particular philosophical concepts that have emerged since
the beginning of America’s "unipolar moment" around 1990.

They may not understand these philosophical concepts in all their
complexities and nuances, but they know the Republican neoconservatives
and the Democratic humanitarians have been driving the agenda.

Thus, you can look now for the American people to take back the
agenda. When this sort of voter clawback occurs in American politics, as
it has from time to time, you see it first in the polls, then in
defensive congressional actions, and then in voter punishment directed
at those who can’t seem to get the message. It’s going to be an
interesting time in the politics of American foreign policy over the
next few years.

In his recent op-ed in the New York Times,
Vladimir Putin raised hackles among the talking-heads across the U.S.
when he questioned the wisdom of President Obama’s evocation of the
narcissistic idea of “American exceptionalism.” After all, the
exceptionalism of the U.S. has never been a subject for reasoned
discussion or debate in the media or elsewhere. Everyone knows that the
U.S. is the greatest nation in the world and, therefore, has special
privileges and responsibilities! Those privileges and responsibilities
include not bothering with international law or processes when the
government decides that the “world” (meaning itself and a few European
nations and a couple of their client states) will take responsibility to
enforce global order according to its own interpretations, values and
needs.

The fact that many in the U.S.
believe that those interpretations, values and needs are neutral,
impartial representations of the global community at large is on full
display every night on cable news channels, where state propagandists
posing as journalists and the coterie of paid ex-military and U.S.
intelligence consultants make impassioned arguments in favor of the U.S.
waging war on Syria as a “punishment” for its alleged use of chemical
weapons.

But for many of us, the story of
American exceptionalism is an alien story, a children’s fairy tale spun
from the fertile imagination of revisionist historians, a tale wherein
indigenous people were sidekicks to lone rangers, the African slave
trade was an unfortunate aberration that was corrected by Lincoln,
children did not work in factories, women were not slaves to men,
socialists and communists were not harassed and jailed, U.S. citizens of
Japanese descent were not placed in concentration camps and Dr. King
would have approved of Barack Obama’s warmongering.

It
is that story which informs the thinking of President Obama when he
declares that “for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the
anchor of global security” i.e. the provider of an indispensable safety
net without which transcontinental chaos would have ensued. In his
version of exceptionalism, there was no CIA overthrow of the
democratically elected government in Iran in 1953; the brutal war in
Vietnam was a war to free the Vietnamese people from communism; there is
an explanation for why the U.S. gave its support to the Apartheid
government in South Africa; the coup in Chile was an internal event that
did not involve the CIA, and the millions of people who died in Iraq
were worth the price to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Aurora Levins Morales quotes
feminist psychologist Judith Herman as she describes the way in which
perpetrators seek to control the disclosures and discourses of abuse:

“In order to escape
accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his
power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s
first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the
credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries
to make sure no-one listens… After every atrocity one can expect to
hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies;
the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any
case it is time to forget the past and move on.”

For African Americans
experiencing depression-level economic conditions, our sons being
murdered by agents of the state at a rate of one every 28 hours, our
children locked away for life without the possibility of parole and more
than a million of our sons and daughters entombed in the dungeons of
this nation’s prisons, we did not need Vladimir Putin to remind us of
the fiction of “America’s” commitment to values and social practices
that make it “exceptional” in the community of nations. That reminder
was also not necessary for our indigenous brothers and sisters who still
struggle for sovereignty, dignity and self-determination in the
aftermath of their American holocaust and America’s God-given manifest
destiny.

Van Jones, the one-time black
progressive who has since sold his integrity to the Democratic Party and
CNN, recently joined Newt Gingrich during their new show to castigate
Putin for having the audacity to suggest that the U.S. was not
exceptional. Attempting his best effort at sincerity, Van offered that
no other country in the world could have made the progress toward
closing the gap between its stated values and social practices as the
United States. Of course Van knows better – he has not forgotten our
history of oppression, nor is he unaware of the contemporary crisis
facing black working class and poor people. He has simply decided to
deny the existence of those realities.

However, for the rest of us who
have been invaded, enslaved, murdered, subjected to systematic racist
dehumanization and colonized, we have not forgotten or denied those
realities despite the best efforts by the perpetrators of our ongoing
oppression to compel us to forget and just move on. In fact we have done the hard
work of reconstructing our own stories and clearing our eyes in order to
see the world unencumbered by distorted myths and narratives that
marginalize our experiences.

As a result, we don’t harbor any
illusions about America and its real intentions when it professes
humanitarian concerns. We know and understand that the ideological
foundation of U.S. exceptionalism and the equally odious notion of
“humanitarian intervention” is just another manifestation of white
supremacy.

From our experiences and
analyses, we can see that the assumptions of Euro-American racial and
cultural superiority are so normalized, and social practices and
structures so deeply inculcated in the collective consciousness of
Americans of all races, nationalities, gender and class, that the
cultural and institutional processes and expressions of white supremacy
have been rendered largely invisible.

That is why so many Americans,
despite their reservations related to Syria, still ultimately support
the idea that the U.S. government has the right to contravene
international law in order to uphold international law, to kill at will,
to decide what nation has the right to sovereignty and to determine
that the value of lives of human beings in Syria are worth more than the
lives of the more than 2,000 murdered by the Egyptian military, or the
1,400 Palestinians murdered by the government of Israel a couple of
years ago.

But as obvious as these moral
contradictions are to most of the peoples of the world, it took the
questioning of U.S. exceptionalism by the President of Russia to cause
people in the U.S. to finally give some thought to an idea that they had
taken for granted as self-evident.

What many people around the world
understand is that exploding the dangerous myth of American
exceptionalism is absolutely critical if the global community ever hopes
to collectively solve the existential challenges that we face on the
planet today. We can only hope that after a decade of war and a
capitalist economic crisis, people in the U.S. will come to understand
this and recognize that their interests and those of their elite are not
the same, and that the U.S. must participate in the community of
nations and peoples as equals.

The popular opposition to Obama’s
proposal to wage war on Syria is encouraging because the world can no
long afford for the people of the U.S. to continue to allow the
country’s elites to impose their will over the rest of humanity. If
people in the U.S. have moved closer to that realization as a result of
this latest Syrian misadventure, that would be truly exceptional.

Ajamu Baraka
is a long-time human rights activist, writer and veteran of the Black
Liberation, anti-war, anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity
Movements in the United States. He is currently a fellow at the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.

What did Vladimir Putin get from the United States for saving
President Obama from himself during the Syrian chemical weapons
"crisis"? Only criticism and ridicule from a reflexive anti-Russian
American news media.

For example, Fox News Channel, often a proponent of high-testosterone American
responses to almost any international crisis, kept poking fun at Putin’s personal
machismo by cycling film of him flipping opponents at a judo session with a
photo of him hunting shirtless with a high-powered rifle. Other more mainstream
media scolded Putin for his recent "in-your-face" op-ed in the New
York Times, with special indignation in response to the Russian president’s
criticism of U.S. "exceptionalism." More universally, pundits either
stated or implied that the Russian leader loved to intentionally tweak the Americans
out of pique or that he couldn’t be trusted.

This outpouring of American ire was astounding in that it came as Russia effectively
pressured Syria, its only remaining Middle Eastern ally, to promise to join
the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy, by 2014, all of its sizable chemical
weapons stockpile.

When someone is trying to help you, it is usually considered bad form, in addition
to being stupid, to kick sand in the person’s face. Why does the US media pick
on Russia? Although Putin has certainly made Russia more authoritarian, the
US government regularly supports despots as long as they play ball with American
aims – for example, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt as they abuse and repress
their own people. Yet hypocritically, the United States criticizes the Russians
for supporting the authoritarian Syrian regime. The real rub is that the current
Russian leader, unlike his predecessor, the drunk buffoon Boris Yeltsin, refuses
to be an American lackey and endure post-Cold War US insults. Perhaps the American
media should spend less time haughtily defending American exceptionalism and
more time realizing that just because some countries disagree with American
policy on certain issues, they are not necessarily out to get the United States.

America is exceptional but not for the reason its own media believes and for
that same reason that Putin is appropriately criticizing. The American media,
and President Obama, seem to believe that the United States is the "indispensable
nation," which really means that only the United States can use its military
to police international crises to save the world from anarchy, chaos, and the
forces of darkness. Yet the world found some way to get along before the United
States was born in the late 18th century. In fact, America is unique
because of its superior political system, which establishes limits to government
power over the citizen by a diffusion of authority among several federal branches
and state governments and provides respect for the rights of the individual.
Yet, the US media constantly infers American virtue abroad from American virtue
at home. Yet democracies and republics are not always benign abroad – for example,
the British and French Empires – and autocracies are not always aggressive abroad
– for example, Burma. Furthermore, in terms of number of military interventions,
America, not the Soviet Union nor Russia, has been the most aggressive nation
in the post-World War II world, despite US criticism of the USSR for its "empire."
And Russia has been less interventionist abroad that the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the arrogance of the superpower outlook leads to criticism of any
country that might disagree with an important US policy. But special rancor
is reserved for Russia, a former Cold War rival that US policymakers dragged
through the mud during the 1990s. After all, little criticism was directed toward
Germany, Britain, and other European nations, who refused to support a planned
US military strike on Syria, while Putin and Russia have been denigrated while
saving American bacon after Obama’s foolish "red line" bravado. In
fact, in addition to Syrian chemical weapons, Russia has cooperated with the
United States on crucial issues. For example, it has reached a nuclear arms
control agreement with the United States, has allowed the United States to use
Russian territory to provide vital supplies for American fighting forces in
Afghanistan, and has supported economic sanctions on Iran. And who would seriously
believe that if the United States captured a valuable intelligence source on
Russia – such as Edward Snowden is for Russia on the United States – that it
would hand him or her back to the Russians?

Finally, exactly where has Putin been dishonest with the United
States? In reality, the United States may have the poorer record on
honesty. Russia was sold a United Nations Security Council resolution
on Libya – which authorized a no fly zone only to protect civilians from
Muammar Gaddafi’s threats – but was then humiliated by a full-blown,
American-led Western air campaign to topple the dictator. Even more
important, as the Soviet bloc fell and the Cold War ended, in order to
get Soviet agreement for a reunited Germany, then-Secretary of State
James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the NATO
alliance would not be expanded. That adversarial alliance now sits on
Russia’s borders.

Instead of being outraged by Putin’s very reasonable letter to the American
people on Syria, perhaps the American media should instead encourage the US
government to finally engage in some introspection based on that letter. The president
was very right to say that Syria should not be a proxy contest between Russia
and the United States. Instead, the United States should abandon its own macho,
militaristic "exceptionalism" and adopt a foreign policy that meddles
less in the internal affairs of other countries. The settlement with Russia
over Syrian chemical weapons is a good place to start.

Vladimir Putin: Globalist Challenges to be Overcome by National Revival

Vladimir Putin has told an influential political forum that Russia
needs to strengthen its national identity based on traditional values,
and vowed to continue the opposition to the unipolar international
political system.

National idea as vital priority in global competition

Addressing an assembly of officials, politicians and political
experts on the closing day of the international forum Valdai
Club, the Russian President said that the nation had already left
behind the “fundamental conservatism” characterized by the
idealization of Russian history after 1917 and that it was
impossible to resurrect Soviet ideology.

However, the president noted that those who supported
conservative ideology were as far removed from real life as the
followers of western-style liberalism. The Russian leader emphasized that the progressive movement was
impossible without spiritual, cultural and national
self-determination, adding that Russia was facing another
convolution in global competition and success in it was vitally
important.

According to Putin, history has shown the impossibility of
imposing a national idea from above and mechanically copying
other countries’ experiences was not effective either. He added
that resistance to the primitive borrowing of ideas and attempts
to civilize Russia from abroad could be explained by the
citizens’ inherent drive for independence and sovereignty in
spiritual, ideological and political spheres. Putin also noted
that such an approach had often failed in other nations of the
world.

“The time when readymade lifestyle models could be installed
in foreign states like computer programs has already passed,”
Putin told the Valdai forum.

All-sided dialogue, but no ethnic separatism

The president then said that all political forces must join the
discussion about national ideology, urging the opposing camps to
listen to each other and to abandon the practice of total
nihilism and criticism. Putin especially warned the nationalist wing, saying that those
who forget that Russia was a multi-ethnic state and attempt to
speculate on regional separatism “step on a path of destruction
of their own genetic code and, in essence, begin to destroy
themselves.”

“Sovereignty, self-reliance and integrity of Russia are
unconditional, they are the red lines no one is allowed to step
over,” Putin emphasized.

Speaking of the possible basis for the new national idea, the
president said that the current Russian leadership chose to rely
on traditional Christian and moral values, noting that without
these millennia-tested ideals people would “inevitably lose
their human dignity”.

Multi-polar world remains priority in foreign policy

In addition, the Russian leader noted that the national revival
of Russia was in line with the foreign policy course for a
multi-polar world and the prevailing of international law over
the rule of brute force. Putin cautioned against attempts to reanimate the model of a
unified and unipolar world, adding that such a system would not
need sovereign states, but would need vassals
instead.

“Russia is with those who hold that the key decisions must be
taken on a collective basis rather than in accordance with plans
and interests of certain states or groups of states.
International law must work instead of the ‘right of the strong’
and the ‘rule of fists’” Putin told the assembly.

The Russian president again stressed that every country and their
people were not exceptional, but they were unique and all had
equal rights, including the right to choose their path of
development.

No democracy is without flaws

Answering questions after the speech, Putin noted that the
current Russian authorities have certain drawbacks and probably
could be better, but the same went for the authorities in any
democratic country.

“It is perfectly right that Russia deserves better quality
leadership in general. However, it is a big and bold question if
such leadership exists in other countries, including the one
represented by Mr McCain [US Senator John McCain who is a
constant critic of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s policies]."
Putin explained that the US presidents had been twice elected in
a vote where a larger number of electors represented a minority
of voters and called such a situation “an absolutely evident
flaw in the election process.”

The president again emphasized that the Russian political system
must be chosen by Russian citizens and not by

“respected
colleagues from abroad”. Putin also said that in the recent
presidential poll the absolute majority of Russians voted for him
and this should be a starting point in any discussion. However,
he also agreed that both he and the Russian state institution
needed perfecting further and pledged to continue working on
this.

Russia’s traditionalist heart

Putin highlighted traditionalism as the center for Russia’s
national identity.

“Without the values at the core of Christianity and other
world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over
millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity,”
he stated.

The president criticized “Euro-Atlantic countries” where
“any traditional identity, … including sexual identity, is
rejected… There is a policy equating families with many children
with same-sex families, belief in God with belief in Satan,”
he said.

“Any minority’s right to be different must be respected, but
the right of the majority must not be questioned,” Putin
added.

Commenting on the law banning gay propanga at Valdai Club, Putin
said that Russia and Europe have demographic problems.

“Europeans are dying out. Don't you understand that? And
same-sex marriages don't produce children. Do you want to survive
by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants.
Your choice in many countries is the way it is: recognition of
same-sex marriage, adoption, etc. But let us make our own choice
the way we see it for our country,” Putin said.

The president added that some American states still have criminal
liability for homosexuality.

“Why does everyone like to focus on Russia? You shouldn't fuel
tensions here; there is nothing terrible here,” he said.

President Putin also joked that his old friend Silvio Berlusconi,
former Italian Prime Minister would not have faced trial if he
was gay.

“Berlusconi faces trial for bedding women. If he was gay, no
one would ever lay a finger on him,” he said with a smile.

On vodka, caviar and Russian-European relations

Having put in a word for Silvio Berlusconi, Putin jokingly ticked
off Romano Prodi, who he earlier asked to comment on Ukraine’s
choice between joining the Customs Union and signing an
Association Agreement with the European Union.

“Do take note of what Romano has just said. He is not only an
intellectual, an academic, a professor, but also a Eurocrat to
the bone.”

Putin responded to Prodi’s remark that Europe and Russia “are
now like vodka and caviar.”

“But vodka and caviar are both Russian-made goods. You see,
those Europeans are fond of a peculiar way of sharing, which is
that first we share what you have, and then it’s back to
everybody for themselves,” the Russian president said.

As Prodi suggested substituting “vodka and caviar” with
“whiskey and soda,” Putin replied by saying, “Actually,
whiskey and soda is a lame, bizarre drink. Whiskey is something
you should drink neat, otherwise it’s just a waste of a quality
product.”

‘Russia deserves best government’

Putin believes that Russia should have the best leadership
possible, but expressed doubts that the American government could
set such an example.

“Russia definitely deserves the best kind of government
possible. But is there such a thing as a perfect government in
other countries, including the one you represent together with
Senator McCain – that is a big and awkward question,”

Putin
said in response to Russian-American political expert Nikolay
Zlobin’s query as to how he sees the relationship between power
and society in Russia.
Putin recalled that it was twice in US history that a president
was elected by the Electoral College without securing a plurality
of the popular vote.

“This is an evident flaw in the election procedure, which lies
at the heart of American Democracy itself. This goes to say that
any system has its downsides. And it might be that your system is
no less flawed than ours, if not more.”

Putin welcomes opposition

Russian President Vladimir Putin guardedly welcomed new
political opposition leaders as he answered a question about
political representation at the 10th annual meeting of the the
Valdai Club, a Kremlin-backed international discussion forum in
northwestern Russia. He referred to parties that currently do not
even have a seat at the table and hinted at amnesty for
protesters accused of clashing with police on Moscow’s Bolotnaya
Square.

“I expect bright leaders to emerge with us. The country needs
them," Putin said during the question-answer session lasting over
three hours after giving a speech.

"Neo-Slavophiles and neo-Westernizers, statists and the
so-called liberals – all of society needs to work together to
shape common development goals, to get rid of the habit of only
hearing like-minded people and … dismissing any other point of
view.”

4th presidential term in the mix?

During the session, Putin also said that he is not excluding
running for fourth term as president. During question-and-answer
period, Putin asked French Prime Minister Francois Fillon whether
the latter has plans to run for president. Fillon agreed to answer only if Putin covers the same question. Putin replied, “I don’t exclude [the possibility]”, to which
Fillon followed up with “And I, too, don’t exclude [the
possibility].”

Linking Europe and Asia

The president also praised Eurasian integration at the meeting on
Thursday, highlighting a planned Moscow-led political and
economic bloc for the former Soviet republics to build links and
capitalize.

“Eurasian integration is a chance for the post-Soviet space to
become an independent center of global development, rather than
the outskirts of Europe and Asia,” Putin said.

He described the planned Eurasian Economic Union as “a project
aimed at keeping the identity of peoples populating the
historical Eurasian space in the new century and the new
world.”

The union is seen as a progression of the Moscow-led Customs
Union involving Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, which was
operational since January 1, 2012.

The
annual meeting of the
Valdai Discussion Club of Russian specialists with President Vladimir
Putin is usually held behind closed doors. This year, to mark the 10th
anniversary, it was a show specially tailored for television. Centre
stage was Mr Putin, flanked by slightly awkward looking dignitaries from
Germany, France, Italy and the United States.

Facing them was a crowd of foreign guests, plus several rows
of Russians, including an Orthodox priest in flowing robes, two
white-turbaned Russian Muslim spiritual leaders, and a rumbustious
handful of Russian opposition leaders - most of whom got a chance to put
a question to Mr Putin.

The president likes marathon sessions and this was no
exception: three hours of questions back and forth with a packed
auditorium, all broadcast live on Russia's rolling TV news channel. It
was a very public occasion, but nonetheless revealing. On getting rid of Syria's chemical weapons, President Putin
was surprisingly cautious. "Will we manage to convince Assad? I don't
know," he mused aloud.

"Will we be able to see everything through? I cannot be 100% sure."

And he shied away from any assumption that it was Moscow's
clout with Damascus that would count most, arguing that ensuring Syria's
compliance was the joint responsibility of the entire UN Security
Council.

Response to McCain

Other senior Russian officials had earlier gone out of their
way to insist that Moscow's influence with the Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad was limited. "We have 100 times less influence in Damascus than the United
States has in Israel," said one senior official. He added that Moscow's
close ally had been Mr Assad's father, President Hafez Assad, and that
it was not until his son fell out with allies in Europe and the Muslim
world that he had sought better relations with and increased support
from Moscow.

Underscoring that this is a collaborative enterprise, Defence
Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed that Russia was ready to send
specialists to take part in the joint efforts to secure and destroy
Syria's chemical weapons.

Mr
Shoigu also revealed that Russia had ships on standby and
all possible evacuation routes and schedules in place, just in case the
remaining 7,000 Russians in Syria needed to leave in a hurry. Mr Putin
was also modest when it came to US President Barack
Obama, denying he had helped him to save face by giving him a way out of
pursuing military strikes on Syria. Simply, Mr Putin said, their two
positions had converged after an analysis of the situation.

And he brushed off scathing
criticism of his government by Senator John McCain in an article
published on a Russian website. Pravda. Instead of retorting in kind, he
said mildly that the senator seemed to suffer from a lack of
information about Russia. He also described, with some pride, how he came to write the
article which appeared under his name in the New York Times, aimed at
influencing American public opinion.

It was, he said, his own work and on his own initiative. He
had dictated it word-for-word to an aide, made his own corrections, and
even added the final paragraph by hand, once he had read (and taken
exception to) the reference to American "exceptionalism" in President
Obama's address to the nation.

Europeans 'dying out'

But
other comments from the Russian president revealed that the gap between
himself and Western leaders was as wide as ever. He repeated his
assertion that Russia had every reason to
believe it was rebels, not the Syrian regime, who were behind the
chemical attack that injured and killed so many on 21 August.

Once again he suggested it could have been a crafty
"provocation", involving the use of ancient Soviet missiles long
decommissioned by the Syrian army, but used deliberately in order to
implicate Mr Assad's forces.

And in an opening speech devoted to Russian values, he
castigated the West for losing touch with its Christian roots when it
came to gender questions. Mr Putin said that "one-gender families" and exaggerated
political correctness were leading countries into degradation and a
deepening moral crisis.

One Austrian professor challenged him on this and asked for a
guarantee that minority values would be respected in Russia and not
subject to harassment. Mr Putin denied there were any laws in Russia to punish
sexual minorities for their orientation. The Russian law which had
caused so much controversy was, he said, simply to stop "propaganda"
among minors.

But the Russian leader did not try to hide his disdain for
sexual minorities. Europeans, he continued, were suffering from a
falling birth rate and could be in danger of dying out if they did not
do something about it.

"You can either have more children to increase your
population," said Mr Putin in typical blunt fashion, "or have more
migrants, but you don't like them either. It's your choice."

He even returned to the subject to make a joke of what he
perceived as Western Europe's distorted attitude to gender issues.
Recalling his friendship with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, he noted that Mr Berlusconi was now on trial for living with
women. "But if he'd been living with men, as a homosexual, no-one would have dared lay a finger on him," Mr Putin said.

The Russians in the auditorium erupted into roars of
laughter. On the panel next to a grinning Mr Putin, his European guests
looked bemused and uncomfortable. The Russian leader did not look in the least bit put out at
this clash of cultural sensitivities. Possibly he even did it
deliberately. It serves his purpose, reinforcing his earlier argument that
Russia's place in the world is unique, with its own norms and values,
and any attempt to force it to conform to other people's view of what is
right and proper would be resisted.

The Rise Of The Bear: 18 Signs That Russia Is Rapidly Catching Up To The United States

The Russian Bear is stronger and more powerful than it has ever been
before. Sadly, most Americans don’t understand this. They still think
of Russia as an “ex-superpower” that was rendered almost irrelevant when
the Cold War ended.

And yes, when the Cold War ended
Russia was in rough shape. I got
the chance to go over there in the early nineties, and at the time
Russia was an economic disaster zone. Russian currency was so worthless
that I joked that I could go exchange a 20 dollar bill and buy the
Kremlin. But since that time Russia has roared back to life. Once
Vladimir Putin became president, the Russian economy started to grow
very rapidly.

Today, Russia is an economic powerhouse that is blessed
with an abundance of natural resources. Their debt to GDP ratio is
extremely small, they actually run a trade surplus every year, and they
have the second most powerful military on the entire planet. Anyone
that underestimates Russia at this point is making a huge mistake. The
Russian Bear is back, and today it is a more formidable adversary than
it ever was at any point during the Cold War. Just check out the
following statistics. The following are 18 signs that Russia is rapidly
catching up to the United States…

#8 Since Vladimir Putin first became president of
Russia, the Russian economy has grown at a very rapid pace. The
following is fromWikipedia:

Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin Russia’s economy
saw the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) double, climbing from 22nd
to 11th largest in the world. The economy made real gains of an average
7% per year (1999: 6.5%, 2000: 10%, 2001: 5.7%, 2002: 4.9%, 2003: 7.3%,
2004: 7.2%, 2005: 6.4%, 2006: 8.2%, 2007: 8.5%, 2008: 5.2%), making it
the 6th largest economy in the world in GDP(PPP). In 2007, Russia’s GDP
exceeded that of 1990, meaning it has overcome the devastating
consequences of the recession in the 1990s. During Putin’s eight years in office, the industry grew by 75%,
investments increased by 125%, and agricultural production and
construction increased as well. Real incomes more than doubled and the
average salary increased eightfold from $80 to $640. The volume of
consumer credit between 2000–2006 increased 45 times, and during that
same time period, the middle class grew from 8 million to 55 million, an
increase of 7 times. The number of people living below the poverty line
also decreased from 30% in 2000 to 14% in 2008.

#9 According to Bloomberg, Russia has added 570 metric tons of
gold to their reserves over the past decade. In the United States,
nobody seems to be quite sure how much gold the Federal Reserve actually
has left.

#11 More billionaires live in Moscow than in any other city on the globe.

#12 The Moscow metro system completely outclasses the subway systems in
Washington D.C. and New York
City.

#13 The United States has the most powerful military on the planet, but Russia is in second place.

#14 Russia has introduced a new “near
silent” nuclear submarine which is far more
quiet than anything the U.S.
has…

The Borey Class submarine,
dubbed Vladimir Monomakh, has a next generation nuclear reactor, can
dive deeper than 1,200 feet, and carries up to 20 nuclear
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Each of these “Bulava” ICBM’s can carry ten detachable MIRV warheads, what they call “re-entry vehicles,” capable of delivering 150 kiloton yields per warhead

#15 While Barack Obama is neutering the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin is working hard to modernize Russian nuclear forces.

#17 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made headlines all over the world when he climbed into the cockpit of Russia’s new “fifth generation”
fighter jet and announced that
it was far superior to the F-22
Raptor.

#18 It is estimated that Russia has more spies inside
the United States today than it did at any
point during the Cold War.

Unfortunately,
whenever I write an article about Russia I find that
most people simply do not get it. They will make statements such as
“the Cold War is over” or “Russia is our friend” which show a complete
and total lack of understanding of the current geopolitical situation.
Russia has been steadily building a stronger relationship with China,
and collectively they represent the number one strategic threat to the
United States. Someday this will become abundantly clear to the American
people.
Hopefully it will not be too late by the time they realize it.

Hope and The Third Rome: The Rise Of Russia As Guarantor Of Human Rights

Recent events surrounding the Syrian crisis have indicated that a
geopolitical transition may be taking place that will have a profound
impact on human
rights across the world. For a great deal of time the human rights
superpower, the world power that prided itself on an impeccable human
rights record and respect for the rule of law was the United States of
America. The statesmanlike approach of Russian leader Vladimir Putin
over the Syria crisis, in contrast to the frantic warmongering of his
American counterpart, has shown that the baton of human decency may now
be passing to a new force for human rights – the Russian Federation.
The assertion of the Russian monk Philotheus of Pskov in 1520 was the
first one declaring that Russia was the heir of the ages:

“Two Romes have fallen…and the third stands, and a fourth there shall not be” (1)

It seems now that the Third Rome, with its roots in Ancient Greece
and Rome, is remerging as a force for good in the world. As the West
begins to sink into the despotism once associated with the East, a power
with a geographic position predominantly in the east takes on the
mantle of civilizational leader. Could it be that Russia is now filling
the moral vacuum that has been left in the wake of the West’s retreat
from the principles of human rights and human liberty?

The moral authority of the United States as a human rights leader
was severely damaged by its intervention in Iraq. However the proposed
intervention in Syria is much more sinister from a human rights
perspective. It follows a pattern of behaviour in which Western nations
have consistently backed the forces of jihad and the standard bearer of
Islamism – the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamism is something that will
never reconcile itself with human rights yet Western powers increasingly
embrace it.

Western elites have effectively empowered Islamists in Egypt, Libya,
and Tunisia, and seem intent on doing the same in Syria. This is
mirrored by their championing of Islamist causes at home, with the
development of speech codes and draconian sanctions applied against
anyone who dares to contradict the Islamist narrative. Sacrificing the
most cherished freedom of all, freedom of expression, is now been
followed by the sacrifice of freedom of movement and freedom of
association in the effort to bolster the power of Islamism in the West.
Actions of the Western elites have made their countries tyrannies at
home, and expansionists abroad! It is quite ridiculous for them be
referred to as champions of human rights!

In countries like Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia Western scheming has
led to the overthrow of secular governments and their replacement by
governments influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The West is now
backing Islamist rebels in Syria and is now on the point of intervening
militarily on the side of these forces. We have seen in North Africa
that Islamists do not respect the human rights of religious minorities
such as Christians when they attain power, and religious persecution
follows whenever they attain any influence. Western leaders are now in
effect accessories to ethnic and religious genocide. If judged by the
actions of its leaders, Western respect for human rights has now
evaporated.

The recent attack by Syrian rebel forces on Maaloula village near
Damascus illustrates the situation. The attack on the predominantly
Christian village was carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra and the supposedly
moderate Free Syrian Army. Why such “moderates” are fighting hand in
glove with the forces of Al Queda remains to be explained. The backing
of such forces by Western Governments, backing that is increasing moving
in the direction of a military alliance, shows the modern West for what
it is with regard to its increasingly appalling human rights record.

A recent article published by the UK’s Daily Telegraph (2) newspaper describes the situation with regard to Syria’s Christians as follows:

“Christians, who make up approximately 10 per cent of Syria’s
population, have increasingly become targets in the conflict as
sectarian-minded foreign jihadists gain influence in the opposition
ranks. Almost a third of the Syriac Christian population has fled the
rebel-held northern town of Hassakeh after Christians became targets for
kidnappings and assassinations.”

The Telegraph article also quoted some eyewitnesses who spoke in the following terms:

“They entered the main square and smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary,”
“First they took a brick factory owned by a Christian guy, who is now missing”
“Some of the rebels entered a home near the checkpoint belonging
to Yousef Haddad, a Christian. They tried to force him to convert to
Islam.”

It is quite clear that rebel forces in Syria advocate extreme forms
of Islam and that that many of their number are jumping at the
opportunity to undertake ethnic cleansing. Nevertheless Western
politicians continue to do the bidding of their Islamist “ally” Saudi
Arabia by continuing to side with these rebels. The lives of religious
minorities in places like Syria are completely ignored and Western
elites refuse to acknowledge that if Assad was ousted from power he
would be replaced by Islamists just as has happened in in other
countries afflicted by the “Arab Spring”.

Western countries may claim to respect human rights on the
grounds that they are democracies. However, increasingly that democracy
is democracy in name only. Many traditional characteristics of
democracy are disappearing in Western nations. Elections do not make
democracy, the rule of law and equality before it makes democracy – this
is something that Western leaders no longer recognise. Western elites
have managed to control the democratic process via control of the media,
the shutting down of dissenting voices, and a contributed system that
gives limited choice at election time. This is why they want to
“democratise” the world – they are experts at manipulating it to meet
elite interests so its trappings can safely be used as instruments of
tyranny and elite group imperialism. It is the sort of democracy that
used to be “enjoyed” in the German Democratic Republic!

In the USA efforts to whittle away the Constitution that was
developed by some of the most enlightened people who have ever lived
illustrate this dangerous trend. The Founding Fathers have even been
labelled “extremists” by the Department of Defence (3). In Europe it is
indicated by the increasing power of the European Union. The
anti-democratic nature of the European Union, ruled by a politburo of
unelected officials in the European Commission demonstrates an obvious
move away from traditional democratic norms. The Commission might well
believe that it is legitimised by the existence of a European
Parliament, but when that parliament is nothing more than a rubber
stamping talking shop that belief is in error. Indeed the European
Parliament resembles the Roman Senate after the Emperor Augustus had
hollowed out its real meaning and power to make it nothing more than a
gentleman’s club for the privileged families of Rome.

It remains to be seen whether the moral decline of the West will
continue. If it continues appointing leaders of the current “calibre”
the situation looks bleak. It may be that Western publics will
increasingly look beyond their own leaders, to places like Russia, for
moral leadership and global vision. May Russia continue to strive to be
the human rights champion of the world; this is in all of our interests
as the human rights vacuum urgently needs to be filled.

The
Alliance does so through endorsing, coordinating and promoting
education and campaigns conducted by its members, in the spirit of
classical liberalism. ICLA and its members will educate the general
public about the significance of the inalienable rights of individuals,
and how these are subtly underlined or openly challenged by political
and religious forces.

According to a recent report from the Valdai Discussion Club,
an influential Russian think tank, members of the Russian elite have
been growing increasingly suspicious about the global ambitions of the
United States over the past few decades.

Already, these effects
are starting to impact Russian foreign policy toward the West,
especially as anti-Americanism becomes widespread in Russian academia.
As might be imagined, the Valdai report (“Russian Elite – 2020”)
spurred debate among both Russian and American experts, especially
about the ability of these elites to influence Russian domestic and
foreign policy.

The new report from the Valdai Discussion Club
analyzes the values and mindset of the Russian elites, as well as the
factors that will continue to influence their formation and evolution in
the near-term future. The report involved a number of high-profile
researchers from both Russia and the U.S., including University of
Michigan professors William Zimmerman and Ronald Inglehart and Eduard
Ponarin, a professor of sociology from the Higher School of Economics in
Russia.

The report summarizes the domestic challenges facing the
Russian elite. It also analyzes the global impact and evolution of the
Russian elite since the 1990s, focusing on the implications of their
rise for the geopolitical agenda.

“A lot of people born in the
1980s will join the ranks of the Russian upper class in the following
decades,” the report reads. “They will make a significant impact on the
choice of a national development strategy.”

At the same time, the
authors of the report argue that Russia is “going through a transition
to a post-materialist society, which means that over time, fewer people
will prioritize material values.” This could bring about a change in
mentality, most notably, “an increase in the number of people who
support democracy”. Yet, this increase is relatively moderate and will
be rather slow over the next 20 years, according to the report.

The
report also suggests that the Russian elite will be highly
ideologically polarized and divided into two groups: one group comprised
of people with post-materialist values and a second group that consists
of individuals with materialist values.

At the same time,
authoritarianism will remain “more and more popular among members” of
the generation born in the 1980s despite the increase in the number of
pro-democracy supporters. This trend may be especially relevant in the
context of Russia’s future foreign policy.

“People who support the
Western idea of democracy in Russia will have to fit into the existing
political system, which is characterized by a vast polarization in the
preferred political regime. Otherwise these people will likely be
excluded from the process of political decision-making.”

In
the context of Russia’s future foreign policy, increasing suspicions
toward the United States might become commonplace for the Russian elite
by the 2020s, according to Eduard Ponarin, one of the authors of the
report. During the presentation of the report at the Valdai Discussion
Club, he noted that the members of the Russian elite have been looking
at the U.S. very suspiciously since their disappointment with the policy
of perestroika in the 1990s.

“Attitudes toward the United
States are being formed under the influence of resentment and growing
patriotic feelings,” the report reads. “This resulted in a distrust of
U.S. foreign policy in a part of the Russian elite. … Moreover,
representatives of the younger generation consider the United States to
be a security threat to Russia.”

Based on these statements, the
authors of the report argue that, when the role of the 1980s generation
becomes more prominent in foreign policy decision-making, “Russia’s
geopolitical stance on the international scene will become tougher.”
This means that Moscow will defend its national interests in the world
with more vigor and tenacity and, at the same time, will be more open
and integrated into the global political and economic system.

One
of the authors of the report, Yegor Lazarev, a postgraduate student at
Columbia University, says that they define the Russian elite as a group
of people that is able to influence political decision-making.

“In
this context, the representatives of the opposition to the existing
system can be seen as elite. For example, [anti-corruption whistleblower
and mayoral candidate] Alexei Navalny
has an impact on Russia’s political agenda. His blog posts spur social
discussions which involve mass media. As a result, the authorities have
to respond,” he told Russia Direct. “In addition, Navalny is
well-known in the West – leading media outlets write about him all the
time. Finally, during his mayoral campaign, he introduced himself as a
talented politician, even though he doesn’t have access to television.”

Eduard
Ponarin clarifies that Navalny can be described more accurately as one
of the representatives of the “contra-elite” or “potential elite”
because he is hardly likely to “manipulate public opinion” or determine
the economical and political agenda in the country.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya,
Director of The Kryshtanovskaya Laboratory think tank, sees the
off-system opposition to the current system as a “contra-elite that
broke away from the Russian main elite.” And this contra-elite
might pose a threat for the government, but it shouldn’t be equated with
the elite because it doesn’t take any decisions in Russia’s politics,
she told Russia Direct.

Likewise, Alexei Mukhin from the Center
for Political Information believes that the radicalized and “petty
off-system opposition can’t be included in the elite” while the systemic
opposition may be viewed as part of the elite, supported by the
authorities. “The systemic opposition is a part of the authorities that reflect their interests as well,” he said.

Meanwhile,
Yuri Korgunyuk, the founder of the Moscow-based INDEM think tank argues
that Russia’s political system reveals a lot of flaws if it excludes
opposition from the elite.

“Many Western countries regard
opposition as an essential part of the elite and if it is shifted to the
periphery and the backyard of politics, it should raise eyebrows about
the whole political system,” he said.

At
the presentation of the Valdai Discussion Club’s report, University of
Michigan professor William Zimmerman said China’s rise may become a good
reason for the Russian and American elite to team up. According
to him, by 2035 China may have become strong enough to pose a threat for
Russia and the U.S. Meanwhile, Mukhin warns against an anti-Chinese
union between Moscow and Washington and assumes that it may result in
negative consequences.

“We shouldn’t team up against China,” he said. “Instead, we should work more on public diplomacy.”

Unlike Zimmerman, Kryshtanovskaya puts into question the hypothetical union of the U.S. and Russia against China.

“This is a traditional viewpoint of
the American ideology,” she said. “It is far from reality, like [Earth] is far from Mars.”

According to her, such union is very difficult to create because the Russian and American elite can’t agree on many issues. The
idea of the hostility of the American elite toward Russia is pretty
strong among Russian elites because these postulates took root “in our
mentality early in school, in the Soviet times,” she explains.

“That’s
why this ideology has been revived again thanks to the state
propaganda,” Kryshtanovskaya added. “Though, on the one hand, we would
like to imitate the American elite on the everyday ‘domestic’ level,
politically we are against this elite.”

Ponarin echoes her view:
“The elites of two countries need a common interest in order to team up.
So far, I don’t see it. Economic ties between our countries are too
weak while geopolitical interests remain contradictory. In some fields,
we have some overlapping interests (for example, in Afghanistan), but
generally, it’s not enough."

In contrast, Korgunyuk believes that
there has always been a unity between the Russian and American elites
when they faced common challenges.

“Take the 9/11 attack when
Russian president Putin called George Bush to express his condolences
and supported the U.S.,” he said. “The anti-Hitler coalition between the
U.S., UK and Stalin’s Soviet Union is another example of such
collaboration. Actually, I don’t think that we have any damaging
geopolitical differences. At the same time, we are not such close allies
like the U.S. and UK because of the big gap in political culture and
ideology.”

Likewise, Gregory
Feifer, an American writer and a
former correspondent of National Public Radio, believes that the
representatives of the upper class should work together but he also
mentioned some hidden obstacles that may prevent such a partnership.

“There's
no reason elites in the U.S., Russia and any other country shouldn't
collaborate, but it's not clear what form that would take,” he said.
“The real point here is that anti-Americanism – while indeed based on
popular support – is fanned and shaped from above. The Russian elite
takes its cues from Putin, who has used anti-Americanism as a tool to
consolidate power – the central point in Russian foreign policy.”

There is a trick in the great labyrinthine bazaars of the Middle East: petty hucksters luring the vacationing franjis
into the market maze and then getting paid to lead them out. As dusk
looms, the unnerved outsider is always glad to be steered to familiar
surroundings. In the matter of Syria, and America's staggeringly inept
diplomacy, Vladimir Putin is the clever trickster who has seized upon an
unsuspecting prey. The Russian strongman now proposes a way out for an
American leader desperately searching for deliverance.

For the full length of this relentless Syrian rebellion, the Russian
autocracy aided and abetted the Syrian dictatorship, a Mafia regime made
in the Kremlin's own image. Moscow granted Bashar Assad diplomatic
cover at the United Nations, and kept him supplied with the military
hardware that enabled him to wage a cruel war against a determined
rebellion.

The survival of the Syrian regime was a
"red line" for the Russian ruler—a true red line. The dictatorship in
Damascus had been forged four decades ago, when Soviet power was on the
rise. Syrian armies and factories, the intelligence services and the
architecture, were all in the Soviet mold. The sun may have set on the
old Soviet empire, but on the shores of the Mediterranean, with a
derelict naval base in Tartus waiting to be revived, Syria offered
Russia the consolation that it could still play the game of the great
powers. In the Syrian mirror, Mr. Putin sees a version of his own battle
with Chechen insurgents.

Now it is dusk, and the hapless Barack Obama
has lost his old swagger. He had feigned intimacy with "the East," he
had thought that he was at ease with that big Islamic world. Instead, he
was befuddled by what awaited him, and now he finds himself at the
mercy of a Russian skilled in the ruses of the bazaar.

Grant the Russians the consistency of their position on Syria. From
the outset of the civil war two years ago, Moscow insisted that it would
not stand idly by and accept a repetition of what had happened in
Libya. The deranged Moammar Gadhafi was a man the Russians knew and
favored. By their lights, they had let him down when they let slip
through the cracks of the U.N. machinery a proposal that called for the
protection of Libyan civilians. The proposal gave NATO the warrant that
led to the destruction of the Libyan dictatorship.

No such ambiguity this time around.
Russia was determined to see its client regime in Damascus to victory.
If Soviet decay and American resolve had all but banished Moscow's
influence from Middle Eastern lands, Vladimir Putin was eager for a
Russian return—all the more so if the restoration came on the cheap.

The Arab rebellions of 2011 had unnerved the Russians. The autocratic
model itself was on the defensive, and those Arab regimes of plunder
and tyranny were both physically close to Russia and bore a striking
resemblance to the lawless Kremlin model of rule. It took no special
genius on the part of Mr. Putin to see the irresolution of his American
counterpart.

There, on display, was the spectacle of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq,
where American primacy had been secured with much blood and treasure.
And there was Iran, unchecked and on a determined drive that had granted
it enormous sway all the way from its border with Iraq to the
Mediterranean.

"The tide of war is receding" was the
American leader's mantra. The Russian ruler fully understood that the
Middle East was a Hobbesian region sensitive to shifts of power, always
appraising the stamina of outsiders who venture into its midst.

Syria itself revealed the abdication of American power. For two long
years, when so many good options were still possible, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov was, in effect, a player on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
team. Time and again, American diplomacy hid behind the Russian veto at
the U.N. Security Council. The Obama administration deferred to the
Security Council, knowing that the White House's public wishes would be
rebuffed. This was the pretext for ignoring the Syrian massacres, the
terrible war in the Fertile Crescent.

At times, Secretary Clinton's brief echoed Russian pronouncements:
These were not ordinary Syrians battling for freedom, we were told, they
were zealots, affiliated with al Qaeda, and surely we did not want to
find ourselves on the same side in Syria with Ayman al-Zawahiri.
(Hillary Clinton's remarkable luck holds: The Syrian horrors don't stick
to her—apparently "global icons" are not held accountable for political
debacles.)

Mr. Putin has an eye for the fecklessness of the democracies. He knew
that the Obama administration, seized with panic, would take the bait
he offered: custody of Syria's chemical weapons in return for giving the
Damascus regime a new lease on life.

We are war-weary, Mr. Obama intones
repeatedly. He was elected to end wars, not to start them, the president
reminds us. But none of our leaders—certainly not the ones who
mattered, who answered the call of history—was elected to start wars.

We anoint our leaders to rid us of our weariness when resolve is
called for, to draw for us the connection between our security and
menaces at a seeming far remove. The leaders of the past two decades who
sent American forces to Bosnia, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq,
were not thirsting for foreign wars. These leaders located America, and
its interests, in the world. Pity the Syrians, they rose up in the time
of Barack Obama.

Mr. Ajami, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, is the author, most recently, of "The Syrian Rebellion"
(Hoover Press, 2012).

Now
that America is leading from behind, more serious powers are rushing to
fill the vacuum. Obama seems ready to let that happen, which is why
India just launched its first homemadeaircraft carrier and why Japan is rearming to keep China from stealing the whole South China Sea.

When
America bugs out, what follows is not love and peace -- contrary to
deeply delusional liberals. What happens is a worldwide scramble for
king of the hill. Instability breeds war, as we can see in the news
headlines. Obama knocked over the Mubarak regime in Egypt, a pillar of
peace and stability for thirty years. Now civil war has erupted all over
the place -- Egypt, Libya, and Syria. So much for the vaunted "Arab
Spring." The Iranians are laughing their heads off, getting ready to
sucker the West again.

And
to show his profound concern for all the killing, Obama is sending
vacation postcards from Martha's Vineyard, laughing and smiling and
having fun. The
Arabs aren't smiling. In Egypt, both sides blame Obama. In Libya and
Syria, we have alienated both sides, too. Behind the scenes, the Saudis
are paying for the Egyptian military to knock down the Muslim
Brotherhood, while the oil sheikhs of Qatar are trying to shaft the
Saudis.

Only
Israel is democratic, stable, and prosperous, nervously watching while
her enemies kill each other. Egypt is now at war with Hamas in Gaza,
where the Muslim Brotherhood is hiding out. Hezbollah is entangled in
Syria, defending the regime against Al Qaida rebels.In the absence of American strength and reliability, all the players are turning to Russia, which is emerging:

● as a vocal defender of Christianity against Muslim persecution around the world;

●
as a plausible peacemaker in the Middle East, with far better
relationships with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria than America
has today;

● as the monopoly natural gas supplier for Germany, with the consent of the Franco-German axis;

● as the only country with a credible a nuclear umbrella to protect its friends and deter its enemies;

●
as a country that understands the value of relatively free markets --
witness the 14% flat tax Putin just introduced in Russia.

Vladimir
Putin now looks like the heir of Peter the Great, the modernizing Tsar.
This is another bizarre twist in history, but facts are facts. Putin's
Russia is not a Marxist imperialist power. That's important, because we
are used to thinking about an expansionist Soviet Empire. Today, Putin
has to be practical, to build up Russian strength after decades of
imperial overreach and national decay. He is therefore using the Russian
Orthodox Church as his ideological base, to build his own popularity.
He is following in the footsteps of the Tsars. So far he is not moving
aggressively, aiming instead for international prestige, economic gains,
and influence in the near abroad. One reason is that he has a global
competitor, China.

That
doesn't mean Putin is a nice man, or that Russia isn't going to pursue
greater power. Putin is a Great Russian ruler. China, Europe, and Islam
are his biggest historical threats. But in the nuclear age there are
threats all around. Putin
is therefore looking to take our place as the decisive power in the
Middle East. He also wants to play a big role in the next OPEC, based on
shale gas and oil. He also likes to poke us in the eye. The
biggest surprise is that in contrast to Obama, our most
America-loathing president ever, Vladimir Putin is emerging as a
defender of traditional Western values.

Is that weird enough for ya?

To
show Russia's seriousness in the Middle East, Putin has paid personal
visits and kept contacts with all the players, including the Sisi regime
in Egypt, Israel, Syria's Assad, and Saudi Arabia. Everybody is now
bidding for his support. It makes good sense. Suppose you are Egypt's General Sisi, trying to run a nation in chaos. Who do you want to guarantee your safety? A self-loathing, treacherous Obama, or a ruthless but very consistent Putin?

The answer is clear enough.

This
also applies to Israel, which doesn't want a war with Iran, but can't
trust the crazies in Tehran. Only Russia has the will and the military
clout to keep the mullahs in their place. America has the power, but not
the will or the trust from its allies any more. If
Putin turns against the mullahs, they can't win. He is too dangerous,
wielding a credible nuclear deterrent -- one he will use if Tehran ever
poses a threat. The mullahs know what Putin did to Muslim Chechnya after
the terror attacks in Moscow and Byelorussia. The Russian army is
brutal and undiscriminating. They don't fear Western liberal hysteria.
Obama may yearn to be adored, but Putin wants to be feared and
respected. Putin is a man, with masculine values. Obama is not.

Our
NATO 'allies" are now happy to buy Putin's real nuclear protection
instead of a weak and vacillating America. This week the French and
Russian air forces are holding joint exercises. It's not a coincidence. In
international politics serious powers prevail. Nobody will bet their
survival on a tiny cult of delusional egotists in the White House. Guys
like Putin will chew them up, spit them out, and ask for seconds. During
the Soviet Empire the rise of Russia would have been very bad news.
Today it might give us a breathing space, to fix what is wrong at home.

We
might start by introducing Putin's 14% flat tax, an idea that was made
in America, but which our political class treats with sneering disdain. If the flat tax works in Russia, watch for another glasnost and perestroika, but this time in America, as our own political ideas come back from abroad.

When the Obama administration announced its "reset" of relations with
Russia in 2009, Americans never expected that it would include making Vladimir Putin
the de facto U.S. ambassador to Syria in 2013. Yet the Russian
president has in effect taken over U.S. diplomacy with the Bashar Assad
regime in Damascus.

The most recent evidence came this weekend with the announcement in Geneva that Secretary of State John Kerry
had reached a "framework" deal brokered by Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov on Syria's chemical weapons. Assad is supposed to provide
an accounting of all his chemical weapons within a week, international
inspections begin in November, and Syria's stockpiles of the weapons
must be removed or destroyed by next summer.

Diplomatic dealmakers John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Saturday.

Most
experts on chemical weapons say
the timetable is unworkable. But ridding Syria of chemical weapons is
not the point. The Kerry-Lavrov agreement is simply a Russian delaying
tactic on behalf of its Syrian ally—a tactic we've seen before. On May
7, amid reports that chemical weapons had been used in Syria,
the Obama administration joined the Russians in announcing plans for an
international conference to help end Syria's civil war. Within two
weeks, Moscow was supplying Assad with advanced cruise missiles.

Moscow's military support of the Assad
regime is one of the main reasons that more than 100,000 Syrians have
been killed in the current conflict. On the political front, the
Russians have vetoed every attempt by the United Nations Security
Council to do something to bring about an end to the civil war. For
example, on Feb. 4, 2012—one day after Syrian forces slaughtered 250 of
their own citizens—Russia vetoed a resolution that would have condemned
the violence there. This was after Russia had weakened the resolution so
that it included no sanctions. Mr. Putin's government even voted
against a nonbinding resolution that expressed "grave concern at the
continuing escalation of violence."

It is extremely unlikely that Russia
is suddenly now going to cooperate with the U.S. on Syria. It is
downright naïve to think that Mr. Putin will do anything that President
Obama asks him to do without exacting a huge price in return. We have
also seen this before. For more than four years, the Obama
administration has capitulated to Mr. Putin's demands and accepted his
rebukes.

It began with the New START treaty on
arms control signed in April 2010. U.S. negotiators limited our missile
defense deployments, reduced our delivery systems and hampered our
ability to monitor Russian missile production plants. In return, Russia
gave up little to nothing of value: The U.S., for example, allowed
limits on missile delivery vehicles requiring us to make unilateral
reductions, as Russia was already well below the limits.

Later, in March 2012, a microphone
accidentally picked up President Obama telling Dmitry Medvedev that
following his re-election he would have "more flexibility" to grant the
Russians further concessions on missile defense. Mr. Medvedev memorably
replied: "I will transmit this information to Vladimir."

Russia's actions in Syria are not the
only reasons to distrust Mr. Putin. Moscow has opposed attempts by the
U.N. in November 2011 to increase sanctions against Iran for its illicit
nuclear program. The Russians voted against a December 2011 resolution
that expressed only tepid concerns about repression in North Korea. And
Russia continues to refuse to extradite the fugitive Edward Snowden, who
stole U.S. national-security secrets.

Meanwhile, the human-rights situation in Russia continues to
deteriorate. The country is consistently ranked among the world's most
corrupt and least free.

Moscow is not even complying with a commitment to eliminate its own
chemical weapons. A State Department assessment in January reported that
Russia has provided an "incomplete" list of its chemical agents and
weapons to be destroyed. It has also missed deadlines to convert former
chemical-weapon production plants. Why would we expect Moscow to help
enforce similar restrictions against Syria?

Assad is fighting for survival and has no interest in surrendering
his chemical weapons voluntarily. Russia wants Assad to stay in power
and will not do anything to risk his position. Nor will Mr. Putin need
to do so, since the Kremlin has bent the Obama administration to its
will before.

Secretary of State Kerry himself has dismissed the plan he is now
pursuing. On Monday last week, he said that the U.S. could ask Assad to
turn over his chemical weapons, "but he isn't about to do it, and it
can't be done." That assessment is likely to prove correct. But Russia
and Syria cynically seized on Mr. Kerry's words and now are feigning an
effort to prove that it can be done.

Based on the experience of the past
four years, the Russians, like the Iranians, are well aware that
pretending to go along can buy time until the Obama administration
becomes distracted with another issue. The U.S. should be prepared for
the diplomatic effort on Syria to fall flat and have more effective
alternatives ready.

The president needs to go back to the
drawing board and come up with a coherent, realistic Syria policy—one
that does not rely on Russia's cooperation.

He twisted the knife and gloated, which was an odd and self-indulgent thing to do when he was winning. Vladimir Putin,
in his essay in the New York Times, may even to some degree have
overplayed his hand, though that won't matter much immediately. As a
public posture, grace and patience would have brought him a lot further,
impressing people and allowing them to feel some confidence in the idea
that he's seriously trying to offer an actual path out of the Syrian
mess.

But maybe he doesn't think he has to win anyone over anymore—and
maybe that's the real news. In any case, the steely-eyed geopolitical
strategist has reminded us that he's also the media-obsessed operator
who plays to his base back home by tranquilizing bears, wrestling
alligators and riding horses shirtless, like Yul Brynner in "Taras
Bulba."

Clearly he is looking at President Obama and seeing weakness,
lostness, lack of popularity. His essay is intended to exploit this and
make some larger points, often sanctimoniously, about how the U.S.
should conduct itself in the world. And so he chided American
leadership, implicitly challenged its position as world leader, posited
the U.N. Security Council, where Russia has done so much mischief, as
the only appropriate decision-making body for international military
action, and worried the U.N. will "suffer the fate" of the League of
Nations if "influential countries" continue to take action without
authorization.

He does not doubt chemical weapons were used in Syria but doubts it
was the government that used them. It was probably the rebels, he
asserts, in an attempt to "provoke intervention by their powerful
foreign patrons."

Still, in general, Mr. Putin made a better case in the piece against a
U.S. military strike than the American president has for it. And he did
so, in a way, by getting to the left of the president, who he implies
is insufficiently respectful to international bodies. Mr. Putin was
candid about his primary anxiety—a spillover from Syria that could
threaten Russian stability.

The Syrian civil war, he both conceded and cleverly noted for a U.S.
audience, is in no way "a battle for democracy." He made no moral claims
for his ally, Bashar Assad. The war, he said, is a battle between
government and opposition, with the latter composed of militants and
mercenaries including al Qaeda fighters and "extremists of all stripes."
He sees what is happening as a danger to his country. Some of the
rebels are from the West, and some from Russia itself. He does not want
them returning home with the training they've acquired. "This threatens
us all," he said. True enough.

Mr. Putin's challenge to the idea to American exceptionalism was
ignorant and tone-deaf. The president had thrown in a reference to it at
the end of his speech. Mr. Putin, in his essay, responded: "It is
extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation." After all, he said, God made us
all equal.

My goodness, that argument won't get you very far in America, and
it's a little worrying that Mr. Putin either wouldn't know this or
wouldn't care. (Here it must be noted: The Times is reporting Mr.
Putin's essay was placed by an American public-relations firm. Really?
This is the kind of work you get from a big ticket, big-time
communications outfit? Can't America even do PR anymore?)

America is not exceptional because it has long attempted to be a
force for good in the world, it attempts to be a force for good because
it is exceptional. It is a nation formed not by brute, grunting tribes
come together over the fire to consolidate their power and expand their
land base, but by people who came from many places. They coalesced
around not blood lines but ideals, and they defined, delineated and won
their political rights in accordance with ground-breaking Western and
Enlightenment thought. That was something new in history, and quite
exceptional. We fought a war to win our freedom, won it against the
early odds, understood we owed much to God, and moved forward as a
people attempting to be worthy of what he'd given us.

We had been obliged, and had obligations. If you don't understand this about America you don't understand anything.

I don't know why the idea of American exceptionalism seems to grate
so on Mr. Putin. Perhaps he simply misunderstands what is meant by it
and takes it to be a reference to American superiority, which it is not.
Perhaps it makes him think of who won the Cold War and how. Maybe the
whole concept makes him think of what Russia did, almost 100 years ago
now, to upend and thwart its own greatness, with a communist revolution
that lasted 75 years and whose atheism, a core part of its ideology,
attempted to rid his great nation of its faith, and almost succeeded.
Maybe it grates on him that in his time some of the stupider Americans
have crowed about American exceptionalism a bit too much—and those
crowing loudest understood it least.

But I suspect on some level he's just a little envious of the
greatness of America's beginnings. The Russian Revolution almost killed
Russia—they're still recovering. The American Revolution has been
animating us for more than two centuries.

The irony of course is that Mr. Putin used the exceptionalism
argument against Mr. Obama, who himself barely believes in the idea and
no doubt threw it into his speech the way he often throws things like
that in at the end: He thinks Americans like it, that the nationalist
ego of the clingers demands it. But he doesn't mean it. Asked
about American exceptionalism once, he said sure he believes in it, just
as the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Thank you for that
rousing historical endorsement.

After Mr. Putin's comments, New Jersey's Sen. Bob Menendez was asked
for his response. "I almost wanted to vomit," he said. This was the best
thing Bob Menendez has ever said, and really did sum up U.S. reaction.

***

A mystery of the Syrian crisis, and the Putin essay, is
this. Mr. Putin obviously feels considerable disdain for the president,
in spite of what he threw in at the end of his essay—that he
and Mr. Obama have a personal and professional relationship marked by
"growing trust." Sure. But I keep thinking of Mr. Obama's meeting with
then-President Dmitry Medvedev in May 2012 and Mr. Obama's famous
hot-mic comment that after the election he would have "more flexibility"
and hoped Mr. Putin understood that. Why didn't Mr. Obama's promised
flexibility earn him any gratitude from Mr. Putin? Why didn't it earn
him Mr. Putin's discretion, especially at a difficult moment like this?

One thing is certain. Mr. Putin's essay was not Nikita Krushchev
slamming his shoe on the desk at the U.N. and saying, "We will bury
you!" Those were bad days. We'll see, in retrospect, what these days
are. It's not a cold war between the U.S. and Russia, and it's not a hot
one, but there's a new chill in the air, isn't there?

"I almost wanted to vomit": U.S. lawmakers unite in fury over Putin's op-ed in NYT

It’s not every day that an opinion piece in The New York Times
simultaneously insults the Republican speaker of the House and nearly
causes the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to
"vomit."

“It
is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation,” Putin wrote. “I was at dinner,”
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez said on CNN after he read the piece. “And I almost wanted to vomit.”

Other lawmakers were equally blunt.

“I was insulted,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Thursday
morning. “I’ve probably already said more than I should have said, but
you’ve got the truth.”

Arizona
Republican Sen. John McCain called Putin's piece an “insult to the
intelligence of every American.” The op-ed was published amid a
passionate debate in Washington over
whether the United States should launch a strike against Syria, where
President Bashar Assad’s government has been embroiled in civil war for
more than two years and stands accused of using chemical weapons.

Every two years, Russia holds massive military exercises in its
north-western territories that open a window onto its strategic thinking
and combat capabilities. September’s demonstrated both a growing
aggression in Russian military posture, as well as an underlying
strategy to keep the West off-balance.

The latest of these Zapad (“West”) exercises were amongst the
biggest yet, a six-day event running until September 26 involving
ground, air and sea forces from Russia and its ally Belarus. The
exercises were run in Belarus, near the Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian
borders, and in Russia’s Kaliningrad territory, between Poland and
Lithuania.

As the deployment of tanks, warships and long-range missiles, and
marine landings on hostile shores demonstrated, this was really about
wargaming a full-scale military conflict against a near-neighbor with
whom Russia has long grievances. It is hardly surprising that the Baltic
states, who have Russian minorities which Moscow in the past has used
as a pretext for leverage, have expressed their dismay.

Furthermore, the size of the exercise has been questioned. Officially, Zapad-2013 involved 13,000 Russian troops (including some 2,500 paratroopers
and other special forces on Belarus soil) and 10,400 Belarusians, along
with a small contingent of around 300 soldiers from Russia’s Collective
Security Treaty Organization allies Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan were also involved.

However, Western intelligence reports suggest that it was rather more
extensive. Furthermore, Moscow launched an associated mobilization of
at least 10,000 Interior Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
paramilitary units meant to maintain domestic security. They wargamed
combating “terrorists” in a series of exercises that actually seemed
more aimed at testing how quickly they could deploy on the streets in
case of protest or unrest.

There is, however, no real prospect of any Russian invasion to the
west. Russian forces are improving, but lack the capacity to take on
NATO on its home turf, and the political and economic implications would
be devastating. Instead, this represents both a genuine effort to
rebuild Russian forces still recovering from over a decade of decay and a
strategy of tension.

As far as Putin is concerned, the more Western nations feel
vulnerable and at threat, the more willing to compromise on economic and
political issues they are, a belief only strengthened by events in Syria. To this end, Zapad-2013 is just one more psychological play in a long-running political game.

Strategic bombers off the American coast, battleships in the
Mediterranean -- the Russian military is displaying its might once again
with Moscow pumping billions into new weapons. But where does the
Kremlin see its enemies today, and why is it risking another nuclear
arms race with Washington?

At eleven o'clock at night, when the moon is reflected in the
slow-moving waters of the Volga River, when the steppes are exhaling the
heat of the day, and when the last bars are closing in Yekaterinburg
and Pokrovsk -- old provincial cities on the river's left bank that are
now called Marx and Engels --, Gennady Stekachov is on his way into
world politics. And everyone can hear it.

The shutters shake in the crooked old wooden houses German settlers
built 250 years ago, and the windowpanes rattle in the prefabricated
high-rise apartment buildings from Soviet days.

The cause of the commotion is Stekachov guiding his 150-ton,
long-range bomber down a runway outside the city and, together with his
crew of seven other men, taking off into the night sky.

He follows his usual route north, up to the Arctic Sea and the
Barents Sea, and then turns sharply to the West to circle the polar ice
cap. The first NATO fighters, now on high alert, have appeared by the
time Stekachov reaches the Norwegian coast. From there on the jets --
French Mirages, British Tornados or Norwegian F-16s -- escort the
Tupolev Tu-95 past the Shetland and Faeroe Islands to a point off the
American coast.

The men spend 16 hours in the air, with nothing but ocean below and not
even a toilet on board. But despite the lack of comfort, the trip offers
plenty of hair-raising excitement, such as when one of the NATO
aircraft crosses Stekachov's path just below his aircraft, which can
carry up to 16 cruise missiles to the most remote corners of the earth.

Stekachov finally sees a purpose to his profession, now that Russia
is sending its strategic air force on patrol flights out into the world
once again, following a 15-year hiatus brought on by a lack of funding.
"In four months," he says, "my crew has flown seven missions to just off
the American coast." Stekachov, a lieutenant colonel from a small,
little-known city on the Volga, has had to wait 15 years for the
experience.

If any Germans are familiar with Engels, a city of 200,000
inhabitants, 350 kilometers (217 miles) from the former Stalingrad, they
know it as the capital of the former German Volga Republic, which
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin dissolved in August 1941, banishing its
residents to Siberia and Kazakhstan. And space flight aficionados might
even know it as the city where Yury Gagarin, the world's first
cosmonaut, landed with his parachute on April 12, 1961.

But Engels is more of a known entity for Russians. Moscow built its
first school for military pilots there in 1930. Today, the city's
airport is home to the 22nd Heavy Bomber Division of the 37th Air Army
-- a unit that, in case of a nuclear conflict, would carry Russian
nuclear bombs to targets in enemy territory. Thirty-seven large bombers
are currently stationed at Engels for just this purpose. They include 18
Tu-95 four-engine propeller aircraft, known as "Bears" in NATO jargon,
with a range of 15,000 kilometers (9,317 miles), and 15 Tu-160 jets,
which Russians consider the world's most formidable flying fortresses,
flying at top speeds of more than 2,000 kilometers per hour (1,242 mph)
and with space for 40 tons of bombs on board -- known in the West as
"Blackjacks."

Only a decade ago, the Engels air base was practically empty. Former
Russian President Boris Yeltsin had ordered most of Russia's bombers
moved elsewhere. But today a banner at the entrance to the air base
encourages local residents to reignite the "glory of Russian weapons."

A hint of the Cold War has been revived between the East and West,
since Russia began sending out its pilots on missions once again, since
its aircraft, in a throwback to Soviet days, have reappeared on radar
screens in the Western hemisphere, and since they have, on occasion,
come within touching distance of the British border and flown over the
American aircraft carrier "Nimitz" and a Japanese island (albeit
unpopulated), to which Tokyo responded by dispatching two dozen fighter
jets to drive out the intruders. "Our job is to show that since we are
capable of flying this far, we are also capable of carrying weapons to
our destination," says Major General Pavel Androssov, the commander of
all strategic aircraft.

Back in Business

The Russian military, still one of the largest in the world, with its
1.1 million soldiers, is back -- and not just in the air. The navy is
conducting exercises in the Atlantic and Mediterranean once again, and
in February the "Yury Dolgoruki" was the first in a new generation of
Russian submarines to leave its dock. The new craft is a giant among
submarines, capable of firing 16 missiles carrying nuclear warheads and
remaining submerged for up to 100 days. A major maneuver of the
country's Arctic Sea and Pacific fleet will be conducted in one of the
world's oceans this summer. The commander of the exercise is President
Dmitry Medvedev.

In 2007, Russia's military budget climbed to 822 billion rubles, or
$35.4 billion (€22.8 billion). And because oil is flushing more and more
cash into government coffers, the Kremlin and its generals have set off
a veritable fireworks of announcements recently. Moscow expects to own
50 strategic bombers by 2015, build as many "Topol-M" intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBM), as well as eight "Bora" (Gale) class nuclear
submarines. It has also developed a new ballistic missile, the "Bulava"
(Cudgel), and the T-95 -- the "tank of the 21st century" -- will be
placed into service next year.

"The Russian military machine is back in business," writes Britain's Daily Telegraph,
describing Russia's "dramatic increase in military potential."
According to Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, the head of the US
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), "Russia is trying to reestablish a
degree of military power that it believes is commensurate with its
renewed economic strength and political confidence." And for US
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the modernization of the Russian
military "underscores the importance of our sustaining a valid nuclear
deterrent," in the future, as he told officers in the US Air Force in
early June.

This is exactly the kind of language Moscow's military leaders like
to hear. It makes them feel that they are being taken seriously once
again. "People don't like the weak. They don't listen to them and they
insult them. But if we have parity once again, they will be taking a
different tone with us," says former Russian Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov.

But what does it mean when the military chief of staff in Moscow,
responding to US plans to install a missile defense system in Poland and
the Czech Republic, is back to talking about the "preventive use of
nuclear weapons?" When he threatens Georgia and Ukraine, both former
Soviet republics, with "military and other measures" should they join
NATO? Or when Moscow, as happened in December, suspends its
participation in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty
and calls into question other agreements, such as the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)?

Is this a show of strength for domestic political purposes, designed to
bolster patriotic pride among Russians? Is Russia trying to return to
the world stage with the tools of the 1970s? Or does the Kremlin truly
feel threatened by the West once again?

Moscow's Akademiya Restaurant is on a small side street behind Tver
Boulevard, next to a newly built synagogue. It is one of the chic
establishments frequented by Russia's new elite. Stanislav Belkovsky, a
thick-set man with a three-day growth, glasses and a receding forehead,
who likes to have his breakfast here, is the head of the private Moscow
Institute for National Strategy.

The notion that Russia is restoring its military might to a level
close to that of the Soviet era has "nothing to do with reality," says
Belkovsky. "It's part of the propaganda with which the Kremlin seeks to
pull the wool over the public's eyes." According to an almost 70-page
dossier titled "The Crisis and Decline of the Russian Army" and
published by his institute, the military leadership should in fact
resign en masse. The report suggests that the military's figures and
announcements are sheer fantasy.

'Pulling the Wool over the Public's Eyes'

According to the dossier, the army has taken delivery on only 90
outdated tanks in the last seven years, all from the country's only
remaining tank factory, in the Ural Mountains region. Experts ridicule
the much-touted T-95, which has been talked about for 15 years, as a
"fiction." During former President Vladimir Putin's term in office, the
air force received only two new Su-34 fighter-bombers, and the Su-35
fighter jet, unveiled last year as a new model, is in fact a close
cousin of an aircraft that was already airborne during former Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev's first year in office, 1985. According to
the Belkovsky report, Russian designers are "no less than 20 years
behind their US counterparts in the development of their
fifth-generation fighter jets." Only 50 percent of all aircraft and
helicopters nationwide are in operation, and the Russian military will
experience a shortfall of 4,500 aircraft next year when outdated
equipment is removed from service.

The situation is no less dramatic when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Under Putin, 405 missiles and 2,498 nuclear warheads were
decommissioned, but only 27 new missiles were produced -- three times
less than under the Yeltsin regime, which was disparaged for being too
soft on America. And the shelf life of 80 percent of Russia's mobile
ICBMs expired long ago.

Belkovsky and his institute see the new "Topol-M" missile as a weapon
"with a deterrent value of zero" -- because the Americans know where
the missiles are stationed and are capable of striking the 100-ton
projectile, along with its transporter, "with an accuracy of one
centimeter" even as it is being driven out of its bunker. And the
"Cudgel," the new "Bulava" ICBM, with which the military leadership
plans to upgrade its nuclear fleet? Almost every test run so far has
proven to be a failure. The SS-X-29, a top-secret weapon that features
multiple warheads and, according to the Russians, is "invisible" because
it can supposedly elude all missile defense systems, appears to have
performed equally poorly to date. Only 12 vessels in the naval fleet,
the core of Russia's nuclear shield, are currently equipped with
ballistic missiles.

"In the 1990s, we managed to more or less maintain the strategic
potential we inherited from the Soviet Union at the same level," says
Belkovsky, smiling maliciously, "but since 2000, its reduction has
progressed with the force of a landslide. We will lose our ability to
contain our enemies at the nuclear level." Unless something changes
under the new president, says Belkovsky, even Russia's conventional
armed forces "will decline to the level of a medium-sized European
nation in eight to 10 years, and we will not be able to keep up with
countries like Turkey or Japan."

Better Big than Effective

Moscow political insiders consider Belkovsky's assumptions all too
provocative, while some believe that he is hedging his bets and is in
bed with Western intelligence agencies. But many other Russian military
experts reach similar conclusions.

It is no coincidence that former President Putin was constantly
pointing out that the US's military expenditures are 25 times greater
than Russia's, says Alexei Arbatov, director of the Moscow Center for
International Security. This, according to Arbatov, is why the Americans
have 1.5 million men under arms and "a military of a quality that we
must strive to emulate. However, we are only capable of funding a
military with no more than 600,000 troops." According to Arbatov, the
Russian military bureaucracy stands in the way of transforming the
military into a smaller but more effective force. The military
leadership's motto, says Arbatov, can be summed up this way: better to
be big than effective.

The fact that Putin, throughout his eight years in office, never
tired of celebrating the resurgence of the Russian army improved the
Kremlin's standing among Russians (and brought the corrupt Russian
weapons industry new orders). But Putin's propaganda backfired abroad,
because it benefited Russia's rival, the United States.

Citing Moscow's efforts to modernize, President George W. Bush has
asked the US Congress to approve $696 billion (€445 billion) in military
spending for the next fiscal year. But the problem with his reasoning
is that the Russian threat is nothing but a cheap excuse.

For years, the US Navy has been modernizing the Trident II ICBMs
stationed on its submarines. The US military also plans to replace all
5,045 of its still-active nuclear warheads by 2012 -- an unbelievably
costly program. It would be the first of its kind in 20 years, and
critics question the need for such a program. And Washington's use of a
missile to bring down a supposedly out-of-control spy satellite in
February fueled suspicions, not just in Moscow, that the Americans have
never truly abandoned their "Star Wars" program.

When a country sees itself as the sole remaining superpower, it
expects to be able to act as it pleases. The United States withdrew from
the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limited the installation
of missile defense systems. The START-1 Treaty, which reduces the
number of long-range nuclear weapons, expires next year, and another
Russian-American treaty to reduce strategic offensive potential will
expire in 2012. Moscow's proposal to replace START-1 with a new treaty
has been met with no response from Washington so far. By the time these
treaties have all expired, there will no longer be any means of
monitoring the enemy's military activities, including joint inspections,
which have helped reduce mutual distrust in the past.

But the Russians are stuck in a vicious circle. To force Washington
to agree to new disarmament programs, the Russians must first convince
the Americans to take them seriously. The problem is that Washington is
no longer impressed by Moscow's deterrent potential. By the end of 2012,
both powers will have between 1,700 and 2,200 nuclear warheads left in
their arsenals. But the Russians know that by then no more than 1,000 of
their warheads will be serviceable anymore.

The Russians Feel Duped

Naturally, a power that sees itself as increasingly vulnerable will
interpret its rival's advances as a provocation. America's plans to
install missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, both
countries near Russia's western border, were met with consternation in
Moscow, as were the NATO alliance's advances in Russia's direction. All
across Europe, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Moscow is now
strategically cut off and marginalized.

Military experts in Moscow know full well that American missiles in
Poland will be incapable of intercepting Russian ICBMs, in terms of both
range and trajectory. The system presents "no direct threat
whatsoever," says Arbatov, adding that claims to the contrary by Russian
military leaders are blatant propaganda. But they are more than that.
The Kremlin has been able to use the tiff over the US missile shield as
welcome leverage to bolster its position in future arms control
negotiations.

But why then is it withdrawing from an agreement like the CSE Treaty,
which is designed to create more confidence in Europe, especially since
Moscow is already "chronically incapable" of even exhausting the quotas
for tanks and artillery "to which it is entitled under this treaty," as
the Moscow Institute for National Strategy writes?

Because the Russians feel duped. And because NATO refuses to ratify
the "modified" CSE Treaty because Moscow has not yet emptied a storage
facility of obsolete weapons in the small Republic of Moldova. Almost 20
years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, weapons in the new NATO member
states are still counted toward the upper limits the CSE Treaty imposed
on the now outdated "Eastern group of countries." Meanwhile, the
Western alliance possesses a real advantage in terms of conventional
armed forces.

The Russians call the situation "absurd," and even Western political
scientists agree that it is time for NATO to change its position.
Instead of seeking a negotiated solution, instead of reassuring the
Kremlin that it is not out to contain or discriminate against Russia,
critics say NATO has maneuvered itself into a corner. Moscow has not
allowed any foreign military inspectors into the country since last
December, and it has stopped notifying the rest of Europe about troop
movements and military exercises.

'Our Leadership Has Ignored the Chinese Threat'

Spring came very late this year to Chebarkul, a small city on the
southern edge of the Ural Mountains. In May, when the ice had barely
thawed in the area's many lakes, local farmers, following old custom,
set fire to the grass in and along the margins of their fields. Thick
clouds of smoke soon settled over the gray birch forests, which had not
even leafed out yet, traveling as far as the provincial capital
Chelyabinsk, 80 kilometers (50 miles) away.

Andrei Chabola also had the fields burned, if only for the sake of his
tank -- to ensure that he would have a clear field of vision for target
practice and would not set the grass on fire with his ammunition.

Chabola is 37, a colonel and already the deputy commander of the 34th
Russian Motorized Rifle Division. He is a Russian through and through,
tall, with a heavy, slightly ambling gait and a strong nose in a
red-cheeked face. He is standing in the crow's nest of the control tower
facing a tank training ground, the Chebarkul barracks behind him. A
number of T-72 tanks are in the process of attempting to cross ditches
and bridges at 45 kilometers per hour (28 mph).

The men driving these tanks are no longer conscripts. The Russian
army has already begun training professional soldiers in Chebarkul, part
of a growing career military that already numbers 100,000 nationwide.
This number is the result of a compromise between the army leadership
and the Kremlin, which has been calling for more effective armed forces
since the bitter lessons of the war in Chechnya.

No one at this base makes a secret of his conviction that the
decision made at the top is a big mistake. "Contract soldiers are in it
for the money, not the fatherland," a colonel mumbles. He prefers not be
identified by name. "Their only motivation is their lack of prospects.
They come from the worst of families."

With two men from division headquarters in Yekaterinburg visiting the
base, hardly anyone is willing to voice such criticism out loud. The
military and the political establishment are already at odds. In Moscow,
the general chief of staff was dismissed in early June because he
considered the red-line policies of the civilian defense minister, a
former furniture dealer, to be insane and dangerous. A tank training
school has also been closed in Chelyabinsk, and the profession of
officer "is worth nothing these days," says the colonel. But the Russian
army's age-old problems still haven't been resolved. According to the
colonel, the families of 122,000 officers have no fixed place of
residence, and a lieutenant would "go to the dogs in Moscow" with the
12,000 rubles, or about €322 ($500), he is paid.

But when the talk turns to the West and greasy Ukrainian vodka begins
flowing in the officers' mess, the men at the Chebarkul base express
their opinions loudly and with one voice. "The Americans are building up
their arsenals; they're surrounding us in Georgia and Ukraine," shouts
Chabola, the deputy division commander. "They want to destroy us." And
doesn't it sound "like a declaration of war," another officer asks, when
Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, says publicly
that the fact that Siberia, with its immense natural resources, belongs
exclusively to Russia is one of the world's greatest injustices?

Although Albright repudiated the supposed quote long ago, the deeply
humiliated Russian soul is unlikely to acknowledge her denials. But even
the Russians know that the world, 20 years after the end of the Cold
War, has become a different place. They know that the number of nuclear
warheads a country possesses is no longer the deciding factor, that a
surprise attack by NATO or a war between countries in Europe has become
highly unlikely and that, for these reasons, simply counting tanks and
howitzers hardly makes much sense anymore.

But what is the Russian military's mission, and for which potential
conflicts must Russia be prepared? Even Colonel Chabola no longer
believes that NATO is still the country's potential main adversary.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chabola served for two years in the
eastern German town of Neustrelitz.

Moscow Obsessed with Its Arch-Rival

But then he was transferred to Blagoveshchensk, a city in the Amur
region in the Russian Far East, directly on the Chinese border. "That's
where more and more Chinese are buying their way into our territory," he
says. "Siberia is big, and there are very few people who still live
there today." To be exact, the population density on the Russian side of
the border is two inhabitants per square kilometer, compared with 103
in the neighboring Chinese provinces.

The Chinese also came to Chebarkul last year, to take part in a
maneuver called "Peace Mission 2007." In all, 1,400 soldiers and
officers in the People's Army, as well as 300 airmen, had traveled
10,000 kilometers (6,211 miles) to this small Russian city in the Ural
Mountains to spend nine days, together with Chabola's division,
simulating the taking of a city occupied by "terrorists." The exercise
was sponsored by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was
founded in 1996 to limit the American influence in Asia.

"The Chinese brought along their own combat technology, set up their
own, separate tent city and videotaped everything, from every Russian
tank to the soup pots in our canteen," says the colonel. "But whenever
one of our men wanted to take a picture of them, their security people
would step in right away."

This doesn't exactly sound like the friendship between the Soviet and
Chinese people that both sides have insisted on in the past. Since
border clashes erupted between China and the Soviet Union on the Ussuri
River in 1969, Russian suspicions of Beijing have run deep. Chabola's
officers are open about who they think Russia should truly fear: "the
Chinese." One of the officers says that he read somewhere that Beijing
has agreed not to pursue its territorial claims against Russia until
2015, "but what happens after that?"

These fears, as plainly as they are expressed by soldiers at this
base, are merely worded somewhat more politely in the analyses of
Moscow's political scientists. They write that the Kremlin and the
military leadership still see the world through the prism of relations
with the United States, and that Moscow is obsessed with a pathological
desire for equality with its arch-rival and has no realistic
understanding of future military dangers. According to the experts at
the Institute for National Strategy, "the assumption that NATO is our
main potential adversary seems rather doubtful today."

Russia should keep its eye on Beijing, says Stanislav Belkovsky, as
he sits in the Akademiya Restaurant and broodingly stirs his cappuccino.
According to Belkovsky, both China's propaganda and its military
developments indicate that the country will expand primarily in the
direction of Russia.

"What amazes us," says Belkovsky, the strategist who is so unpopular
at home, "is that our leadership has simply ignored the Chinese threat
until now."

In the last year Russia has emerged as a major power in the
international arena. Its consistent support for the repressive Islamic
Republic of Iran that crushed the Green Movement in 2009 and the Assad
dictatorship in Syria that has killed over 100,000 people in two years
has reaped significant diplomatic rewards for Moscow. In the upcoming
negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, its greatest coup came
last month in getting Syria to move to the negotiating table and provide
a detailed list of its chemical weapons. Even Egypt, which twice booted
out Russia in the '90s, is now rumored to be considering importing
Russian weapons and Russian aid in anger over the lack of American
support for its military coup over the Islamists and cutting American
aid, and has become a major player for trying to resolve seemingly
intractable Middle East issues. The news is full of the words and
sightings of the brilliant Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and
his somewhat mercurial President Vladimir Putin. Clearly Russia seems
back. But, is this for real or only a temporary interlude?

Russian history provides a sense of deja vu. While major powers have
risen and fallen over the centuries (Spain, Holland, France, Germany,
Japan, England) or simply risen and gently begun to fall (United
States), Russia has gone through the cycle several times. Its earlier
incarnations as Kievan Rus, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union were
respectively destroyed by the Mongol occupation (1240-1480), the
Russian Revolution (1917) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)
that created 15 new nations in place of the Soviet Union.

Russia's current emergence as a major power depends greatly upon the
fate of rival powers. The Obama unwillingness to exert military power in
the Middle East, the European Union's focus on economic problems and
consensual decision making, the decline of Japan, the economic issues
plaguing India and the preoccupation of rising China with its serious
domestic problems (massive corruption, extreme social stratification,
extensive air and water pollution) all have provided an opening for
Russia.

Can Russia sustain its new role? Clearly in the next few years this
is likely. But in the longer run Russia's own deep problems will
preclude it from playing a strong international role.

Russia's $2 trillion economy is barely larger than the Canadian
economy. Russia's economy is less than 3 percent of global GDP and only
14 percent the size of the American economy. Its agricultural sector is
backward and its trade, dominated by exports of oil and gas, is the
profile for a Third World, not First World, country. The World Bank rates Russia 112th in the world after Egypt and Pakistan in the ease of doing business while the Transparency Index
puts Russia at 133rd in the world for corruption, barely eking out
Nigeria (139th). The Russian military performance in Chechnya and
Georgia was well below the standard of major powers. Despite the second
largest array of scientists and engineers in the world, Russia has no
Silicon Valley.

Demographically, several million well-educated Russians in the last
40 years have emigrated to the United States, Europe and Israel. The
birth rate, while increasing, remains low. Average life expectancy of
68.6 years leaves Russia more than ten years behind that of life
expectancy in the West. Politically, it is a semi-democracy with
extensive corruption and state domination of the political system by the
Silovik elite (secret police and military personnel). Internationally,
while the United States and the Europeans have numerous foreign allies,
the Russians can count on only a few small countries such as Cuba and
Syria.

Thus, in 2020 or 2030, when China, India and Brazil likely become
major powers, the United States rebounds under new leadership and the
Middle East hopefully stabilizes, there will be precious little room for
Russia to maneuver. Until then, by supporting the status quo, Russia
will enjoy a few years until the wheel turns and it once more, as it has
does so often in the past, loses much of its power in the world. But,
until the inevitable demise, Lavrov and Putin will be center stage as
the world once more transits to a new multi-polar order.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s
presidency has been his commitment to revitalizing Russia’s military.
Putin, who has noted that Russia’s perceived weakness makes it
vulnerable to external pressure and internal disruption, is pushing for
increased funding to transform the Russian armed forces from the
debilitated remnants inherited from the old Soviet superpower military
machine into a smaller, but more modern, mobile, technologically
advanced and capable twenty-first century force.

Earlier this year, in an address delivered on the day devoted to the
“defenders of the Fatherland,” the Russian president proclaimed:
“Ensuring Russia has a reliable military force is the priority of our
state policy. Unfortunately, the present world is far from being
peaceful and safe. Long obsolete conflicts are being joined by new, but
no less difficult, ones. Instability is growing in vast regions of the
world.”

This is not empty talk. The rhetoric has been matched by a concurrent
allocation of resources; Russia is now engaged in its largest military
buildup since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than two decades
ago, with major increases in defense spending budgeted each year to
2020. Putin has pushed for this program even over the objections of some
within the Kremlin who worried about costs and the possible negative
impact on Russian prosperity; opposition to the expansion of military
spending was one of the reasons the long-serving Finance Minister
Aleksei Kudrin left the cabinet two years ago.

The rest of the world is taking notice.

After years of thinking of Russia as “Upper Volta with missiles”—a
nation which possessed a sizeable strategic nuclear stockpile but whose
conventional forces had not particularly covered themselves with glory
in their post-Soviet operations—Russian plans for military reform and
rearmament have generated some concern, particularly in the U.S.
national-security establishment, which had assumed that Russia would not
be in a position to project much power across its borders. The
resumption of bomber patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the
dispatch of task forces (particularly to the Caribbean), the 2008
campaign against Georgia, and the growing size and sophistication of the
yearly joint maneuvers with the Chinese army and navy[3]
have all worked to resurrect the image of Russia as a military threat.
Justification for U.S. defense expenditures, which previously focused
largely on increases in Chinese spending, now take into account Russia’s
military buildup as well.

Perusing budget reports and position papers, Russian
plans—spearheaded by the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Dmitry
Rogozin, the deputy prime minister in charge of the defense
industry—certainly look impressive—and ominous. If, only a few years
ago, the shipbuilding budget for the Russian navy was less than 10
percent of the U.S. Navy, the Russians have now closed the gap and the
Russians are, in terms of budgetary outlays, spending about half of what
will be allocated to the U.S. Navy for new ship construction. By 2020,
the Russian army will be structured around combat-ready and easily
deployable brigades, with a goal of having those forces be at least 70
percent equipped with next-generation weaponry and equipment. If all
goes according to plan, the Russian military, by 2020, will return to a
million active-duty personnel, backed up by 2300 new tanks, some 1200
new helicopters and planes, with a navy fielding fifty new surface ships
and twenty-eight submarines, with one hundred new satellites designed
to augment Russia’s communications, command and control capabilities.
Putin has committed to spending some $755 billion over the next decade
to fulfill these requirements.

And a growing number of Russians support the military buildup. A
Levada Center poll found that 46 percent of Russians were in favor of
increasing military spending even if it led to an economic slowdown
(versus 41 percent opposed if defense increases caused economic
hardship). This is in part due to a growing fear that Russia’s vast
natural resource endowment, particularly in the Arctic, is vulnerable if
the country lacks the means to protect it. Rogozin himself has
continuously warned that without a modern military force, Russia is
liable to be “looted” in the future.

Yet there is often a noticeable gap between declared Russian
intentions and executable results. To what extent are these ambitious
goals realizable?

Some observers have been prepared to write off these plans as
Potemkin posturing—or new and creative ways to transfer more of Russia’s
state funds into private hands through creative, corrupt schemes.
Certainly, any expansion of the military budget represents enormous
opportunities for graft. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the clear
evidence that this buildup is restoring capabilities to the Russian
armed forces that had been lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the last eighteen months, Russia conducted military exercises on a
scale not seen since the end of the Cold War (such as the recently
concluded military trials in the Far East). While still highlighting
problems with command and control systems and with equipment, these
nonetheless have also demonstrated that the reforms are starting to have
an impact, and that Russia is capable of fielding a more mobile,
effective force.

This concerns NATO a great deal. The North Atlantic alliance’s
ability to conduct “out-of-area” operations, combined with the decision
by most European countries to significantly reduce their defense
spending, was predicated on an assumption that Russia no longer poses a
threat. While no one is anticipating Russian tanks again poised to rush
through the Fulda Gap, the American expectation that Europe could become
a “security exporter” to other, more troubled parts of the world must
now be revisited, since Russia is effectively reversing its “disarmed”
condition of the 1990s upon which such calculations were based.

At the same time, however, the buildup will not be smooth sailing for the Russian government.

The first issue is whether Russia’s defense industry can actually
produce the tools called for in the new defense strategy. Dmitry
Gorenburg of the Center for Naval Analyses has noted that the plans
released by the Ministry of Defense rely on overly optimistic
assessments of how quickly Russian factories and shipyards can turn out
new equipment—assuming that there will be no delays, technical or design
problems, or bottlenecks. Design problems have already forced a
two-year delay in implementing a state procurement order for
thirty-seven Su-35 aircraft, which will not be fulfilled until 2016.
Gorenburg and other experts argue that it is highly unlikely that the
buildup will come close to meeting the stated targets.

Moreover, the Russian military-industrial complex is far from
achieving a “zero-defects” standard when it comes to producing
equipment. A string of missile failures (particularly with the Bulava
submarine-launched ballistic missile), delays in releasing new ships (or
in getting the retrofitted aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov/Vikramaditya
ready for service in the Indian Navy), and issues with quality control
in vehicles have all raised questions about the reliability of
Russian-made military products.

There is also real concern about the health of Russia’s research and
development sector and whether or not Russia can indigenously produce
many of the technologies needed to produce fifth-generation weapons
systems. Former defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov strongly resisted
pressure to simply order slightly-newer variants of older, Soviet-era
equipment, even though Russian industries were lobbying for increased
state orders, and sought to import defense items from abroad, including
drones from Israel, the Iveco light multirole vehicles from Italy, and
the Mistral amphibious assault ships from France, as a way to equip the
Russian military with newer technologies that could not be produced by
domestic sources. (Finding ways to license or reverse-engineer foreign
military technology will be one of the Russian defense industry’s major
tasks in the coming decade). Discontent with Serdyukov’s willingness to
turn to foreign suppliers, however, was one of the contributing factors
in his removal as defense minister last year.

Serdyukov also attempted to reform the manpower structure of the
Russian military, again arousing significant opposition by his efforts
to reduce the size of the officer corps (especially the number of
general and flag officers) and to push the Russian military away from
reliance on the draft towards the development of a volunteer,
professional force. But announced plans to increase the size of the
standing army run up against Russia’s demographic realities. Russia has a
labor shortage; the recovery of the Russian economy has diminished the
surplus pool of excess labor that in years past would have been absorbed
by the draft. Between deferments and the increase in health problems
among some segments of the Russian population, some 60 percent of the
draft-age population of young males is now ineligible for service.
Efforts to make contract service more appealing (following some of the
reforms undertaken in the United States in the shift to an all-volunteer
force back in the 1970s) have had some successes, but while the Russian
military has announced it will create forty new brigades (to augment
the some seventy brigades already in existence) by 2020, it must also
deal with the reality that many existing units are 25 percent or so
understrength. Shoigu must continue reforms of how the Russian military
recruits (and treats) its personnel—the compulsory draft and the harsh
conditions created by the so-called dedovshchina system (the
hazing of new recruits by their non-commissioned officers and other
superiors) do not lend themselves to creating a more professional
military force capable of attracting and retaining volunteers. The
amount that must be spent—on increased salaries, perks and incentives—to
attract more Russians to contract service may also be more than what
the defense establishment is willing to pay.

Much will depend on several factors. The first is whether the Russian
treasury will hang on to the same expected level of funds from the
export of oil and natural gas to support the military transformation;
any major collapse in the price of energy imperils these plans. The
second is whether the Russian defense industry can become more agile and
adaptive. Will they use increases in state spending to successfully
unveil new products? This will be important not only to fulfill Putin’s
requirements but also to retain Russia’s traditionally lucrative
overseas markets for sales of military goods. Russia will lose its
competitive edge not only to American and European competitors but also
to Chinese firms if it cannot keep pace with newer developments in
defense technology. A third point is whether the Russian military can
obtain the manpower it needs, whether by offering better terms of
contract service or being permitted to recruit among Russian-speaking
populations elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.

But even if the Defense Ministry’s ambitious targets for how many
personnel it expects to have under arms and the quantity of advanced
equipment it hopes to field are not met in full, the Russian military is
growing stronger. Russia may not be in a position to directly challenge
the United States—whose spending still far outstrips that of
Moscow’s—but given other regional trends, especially in Europe, it is
restoring its conventional capabilities to back up claims to great power
status. Whether the newfound confidence that results will make Russia
more cooperative or obstructionist in the international arena is an open
question.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a senior editor at The National Interest[4], is a professor of national-security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are entirely his own.

Shiite Militiamen From Across the Arab World Train at a Base Near Tehran to Do Battle in Syria

At a base near Tehran, Iranian forces are training Shiite militiamen
from across the Arab world to do battle in Syria—showing the widening
role of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria's bloody war.

The busloads of Shiite militiamen from Iraq, Syria and other Arab
states have been arriving at the Iranian base in recent weeks, under
cover of darkness, for instruction in urban warfare and the teachings of
Iran's clerics, according to Iranian military figures and residents in
the area. The fighters' mission: Fortify the Syrian regime of President
Bashar al-Assad against Sunni rebels, the U.S. and Israel.

Iran's widening role in Syria has helped Mr. Assad climb back from
near-defeat in less than a year. The role of Iran's training camp for
Shiite fighters hasn't previously been disclosed. The fighters "are told that the war in Syria is akin to [an] epic
battle for Shiite Islam, and if they die they will be martyrs of the
highest rank," says an Iranian military officer briefed on the training
camp, which is 15 miles outside Tehran and called Amir Al-Momenin, or
Commander of the Faithful.

The training of thousands of fighters is an outgrowth of Iran's
decision last year to immerse itself in the Syrian civil war on behalf
of its struggling ally, the Assad regime, in an effort to shift the
balance of power in the Middle East. Syria's bloodshed is shaping into
more than a civil war: It is now a proxy war among regional powers
jockeying for influence in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions.

The coffin of a pro-Assad
regime fighter, reportedly killed in rebel clashes, is draped with an
Iraqi flag during a funeral south of Baghdad on Sunday. On one
side of this proxy war is Mr. Assad, backed by Iran, Russia and Shiite
militias. On the other side, the rebels, backed by Saudi Arabia, Arab
states and the U.S.

This account of the expanded involvement in Syria of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards is based on interviews with individuals with direct
knowledge of the Guards' activities, including Syrian and Arab Shiite
fighters, members of the Guards, high-ranking military personnel in Iran
and an adviser to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant force and
political party in Lebanon. The Guards, a military unit tasked with
safeguarding Iran against external or internal threats, is also a
powerful political and economic organization.

On Friday, Dutch television broadcast a video described as having
been made by a Guards filmmaker in Syria that shows Guards members
living in a school in the city of Aleppo and meeting with the local
Syrian army commander. In the video, the Guards commander in Aleppo says
he has been commanding Syrian Army units for a year and a half and that
Iran is training fighters from around the Arab world to fight in Syria.

A senior official at Iran's mission to the United Nations says, "The
Islamic Republic of Iran has no military involvement in Syria." The
official, Alireza Miryousefi, says the main obstacle to peace in Syria
is "the foreign financial and military support that Syrian rebels
receive from some Arab and Western countries."

Just over a
year ago, U.S. officials publicly described Mr. Assad's fall as
imminent. That would have been a major blow for Iran: Syria is Iran's
most important Arab ally and serves as a land bridge for Iranian arms
and cash to Lebanese and Palestinian militias fighting Israel. Last
summer, after Syrian rebels captured large sections of the important
northern city of Aleppo, the senior command of the Revolutionary Guards
sprang into action, according to U.S. officials and Guards members in
Iran. Under its overseas commander, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the military
unit established "operation rooms" to control cooperation between
Tehran, Syrian forces and fighters from Hezbollah, Lebanon's most
powerful military force and a creation of the Guards in the 1980s,
according to U.S. and Arab officials and Guards members.

Two senior commanders who oversaw Tehran's 2009 crackdown on Iranian
pro-democracy protesters—Generals Hossein Hamadani and Yadollah
Javani—were deployed to Syria, according to U.S. officials and Guards
members. Gen. Soleimani also sent top Guards personnel who had run
counterinsurgency campaigns against Iran's own rebel movements, these
people say.

Some Revolutionary Guards military advisers and counterinsurgency
experts have gone into battle alongside Mr. Assad's forces and militias
to secure key victories, say these officials. Iranian websites tied to
the Guards have memorialized the names of Guards members described as
Iranian "martyrs" killed in the Syrian civil war. The sites publish
pictures of the funerals and report that Guards commanders sometimes
give speeches.

The Guards and Gen. Soleimani also are mobilizing thousands of
fighters from Arab countries, primarily Lebanon and Iraq, to fortify Mr.
Assad's security forces, training them at camps like Amir Al-Momenin,
say these officials.

The Amir Al-Momenin camp, home to the Guards' ballistic missile
arsenal, is an important military installation. Shiite fighters are
trained there in guerrilla warfare, field survival and the handling of
heavy guns, according to Guards members and others who work in the camp.
There are also daily religious classes.

The military wing of Lebanese Hezbollah
has alone sent thousands of fighters into Syria in coordination with
the Guards. Hezbollah commanders currently control important strategic
areas reclaimed by the Damascus regime, including the city of Qusayr,
some sections of the city of Homs and enclaves in the southern province
of Deraa.

"Qasem Soleimani is now running Syria," says Col. Ahmed Hamada, an
officer with the rebel Free Syrian Army, based in its command near the
northern city of Aleppo. "Bashar is just his mayor."

U.S. officials say they don't have any specific information on the
Amir Al-Momenin camp. But defense officials say it appears consistent
with how the Guards trained Iraqi militants to fight U.S. and allied
forces in Iraq. The Pentagon captured and interrogated hundreds of
Shiite fighters during the Iraq war who described traveling to Iran for
training.

Iranian and Syrian officials publicly acknowledge their cooperation
in the war. Syria's foreign minister last month said the two countries
are working out of the same "trench." But Mr. Assad and other senior
Syrian officials say the Guards aren't running Syria's overall campaign.
They call the allegations propaganda to justify U.S. military action.

"This is really funny," says Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal
al-Mekdad, regarding claims that Iran is helping to run the war. He
calls them "rumors" intended to "deceive the public."

Iran also supports Syria's regime financially and politically. In
July Iran offered Syria a $3.6 billion credit line to buy oil and food
and in January another $1 billion credit line to import goods from Iran.
Iranian officials have also defended Mr. Assad: After claims that his
forces used chemical weapons, Iran blamed rebels for the attack.

The presence of Iran and its proxies inside Syria is emerging as a strategic challenge for President Barack Obama
as he maintains the threat of military strikes against the Assad regime
in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons last month. The
White House says any U.S. military operations against Syria would be
limited and focused solely on degrading Damascus's chemical-weapons
capabilities.

Iranian and Lebanese individuals with
knowledge of the Guards say the organization is debating whether it
would retaliate against U.S. and Israeli targets stationed in the
Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, either directly or through proxies, such
as Hezbollah and Iraqi militias.

Tehran, Damascus and Hezbollah
describe the Syria conflict as a potential turning point in what they
consider their struggle with the U.S. and its Mideast allies,
particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia. They also see their fight as a
defense of Shiites against Sunni extremists. Iran, and its majority Shiite population, is locked in a regional
battle for influence with the Sunni states, led by Saudi Arabia. The
conflict is also playing out in Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestinian
territories.

"Syria is the front line of
resistance," Gen. Soleimani recently told an elite Iranian government
body, according to state media. "We will support Syria to the end."

Tehran's alliance with Syria began
shortly after Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. Damascus under Mr.
Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, was the first Arab country to back
Iran's revolutionary government. Tehran's ayatollahs, in turn,
recognized the Assad family's Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shiite
Islam, as a legitimate branch of their religion.

The Guards' influence in Damascus grew
significantly after Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000, according to
current and former Syrian military officers. Operations between the
Guards and Syria's security forces started to grow more integrated, with
Iranian advisers basing themselves in Syria. Iran's government opened
weapons factories and religious centers in Syria as well.

"Bashar relied on Iran in a way his
father never did," says Col. Hamada, the FSA commander, who defected
from the Syrian military last year.

During the first year of Syria's war, Tehran's involvement was
relatively limited, according to U.S., Arab and Iranian military
officials. Iranian experts in electronic surveillance and crowd control,
schooled during Tehran's 2009 crackdown on democracy protesters, were
dispatched to Damascus. However, no Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah
fighters were yet engaged in significant fighting.

Iran's widening military presence inside Syria showed itself in
August 2012. That month, Free Syrian Army rebels kidnapped 48 Guards
commanders and personnel in Damascus. Iran's government first called the
men Shiite pilgrims, then later described them as "retired"
Revolutionary Guards officers.

Last summer, the Guards began deploying fighters for the first time,
according to Iranian military officials and Syrian rebels. The majority
weren't sent to fight, but to repair equipment, guard military
installations and fill in for defecting Syrian units.

FSA commanders possess identification cards and dog tags of Iranian
soldiers they say they captured or killed in battle. "Assad asked for
them to be on the ground," says Gen. Yahya Bittar, who leads the FSA's
overall intelligence operations. "The Iranians are now part of Syria's
command-and-control structure."

The Revolutionary Guards and its allies deployed on a wider scale
this spring as Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar increased
their shipments of arms and cash to Syrian rebels, according to Syrian
government officials and Hezbollah. The U.S. believes some of the
opposition's militias have al Qaeda ties.

Tehran has been particularly focused on fortifying western and
central Syria, regions which control access into Lebanon and Hezbollah,
according to U.S. and Arab officials and Syrian rebels. This May,
Hezbollah sent thousands of its elite fighters into the central Syrian
city of Qusayr and almost single-handedly pushed out the rebels that
threatened their supply lines.

The battle was viewed in Washington as a potential turning point in
Syria's civil war. The Guards and Gen. Soleimani coordinated with
Hezbollah in prosecuting this fight, sending military advisers to the
city, according to rebel fighters and a journalist who saw them there.

Today, Hezbollah independently runs
Qusayr, and its commanders are in charge of maintaining discipline among
Mr. Assad's forces. The Lebanese militia has established an operations
base in the town's northern section that is off-limits to most Syrian
civilians. A Hezbollah commander, who identified himself as Abu Ahmed,
patrolled Qusayr one recent afternoon with fighters in a pickup truck.
He said only regime loyalists are allowed back into the city, and that
they must be vetted by him personally.

Much
of the city remains deserted and
badly damaged. Dueling Sunni-Shiite graffiti still covers many walls,
sometimes referencing epic battles dating from the seventh century.
Hezbollah, and Syrian militias under its command, have also been
leading the Assad regime's campaign to retake Homs, a strategic province
bisecting the country. In recent weeks, they have pushed out rebels
from most of the capital, Homs city.

"We did the heavy lifting," said a
19-year-old Syrian militiaman, identified as Abdullah, who fought under a
Hezbollah commander in a district called Khalidiya, this August. "If we
take back all of Homs, the revolution is going to be completely
finished."

The Revolutionary Guards, meanwhile, continue to mobilize thousands
of Shiite fighters to battle the largely Sunni rebels being armed,
trained and funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran's other rivals, say Iranian
officials and Arab intelligence officers. At the Amir Al-Momenin base
near Tehran, Shiites from Yemen and Saudi Arabia are being trained for
fighting inside Syria, say Guards officials and Iranian villagers who
live near the facility.

Dozens of buses with tinted windows carrying the men have been
arriving nightly at the base, which is surrounded by farmlands, they
say. Many enter Iran under the pretext of being religious pilgrims, then
are sent to Syria via Iraq.

In addition, members of two Iraqi militias, Kata'ib Hezbollah and
Asaib Ahl al-Haq, said in interviews near Damascus that they have been
deployed into Syria in greater numbers over the past year to help
stabilize Mr. Assad's rule. Both groups were formed by the Guards during
the Iraq war and carried out some of the most sophisticated and lethal
attacks on U.S. troops, American and Iraqi defense officials say.

"Compared with the aid and support that Arab countries are giving to
opposition groups, we haven't done much in Syria," said the Guards'
commander-in-chief, Gen. Muhammad Ali Jaffari, last year, according to
official Iranian media. "We've only given our advice, shared our
experiences and given guidance."

The August chemical weapons attack in the Syrian capital’s suburbs
was done by a Saudi Arabian black operations team, Russian diplomatic
sources have told a Russian news agency.

“Based on data from a number of sources a picture can be
pieced together. The criminal provocation in Eastern Ghouta was
done by a black op team that the Saudi’s sent through Jordan and
which acted with support of the Liwa Al-Islam group,” a
source in the diplomatic circles told Interfax.

The attack and its consequences had a huge impact on the Syrian
situation, another source said.

“Syrians of various political views, including some opposition
fighters, are seeking to inform diplomats and members of
international organizations working in Syria what they know about
the crime and the forces which inspired it,” he told the
agency.

Liwa Al-Islam is an Islamist armed group operating near Damascus
headed by the son of a Saudi-based Salafi cleric. The group
claimed responsibility for the bombing of a secret governmental
meeting in Damascus in July 2012 that killed a number of top
Syrian officials, including Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, his
deputy Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan
Turkmani.

The allegations mirror a number of earlier reports, which pointed
to Saudi Arabia as the mastermind behind the sarin gas attack,
which almost led to US military action against Syrian government.
Proponents of this scenario say intelligence services in Riyadh
needed a false flag operation to provoke an American attack in
Syria, which would tip the balance in favor of the armed
opposition supported by Saudi Arabia.

While the majority of Western countries say they are certain that
the Syrian government carries the blame for the attack, Damascus
maintains that the rebel forces must be behind it. Russia shares
this conviction too, calling the incident a provocation.

Back in March US President Barack Obama said the use of chemical
weapons would be a ‘red line’ for the Syrian government, crossing
which would prompt America’s intervention into the bloody Syrian
conflict. After the August attack, which the US believes has
claimed some 1,400 lives, the president was called on his words
by many supporters of the Syrian opposition both at home and
outside of the US.

Earlier a UN report concluded that nerve gas had indeed been used
“on a large scale” in August. However, the consistency of
the findings is under question. According to the report, none of the environmental samples the UN
collected in Western Ghouta tested positive for Sarin, while
biomedical samples, taken from affected people, all tested
positive.
RT’s Worlds Apart host Oksana Boyko has spoken to Angela Kane, UN
high representative for disarmament affairs, who has just
returned from Damascus.

“If you read the report, the report comes out and says sarin
was used. It is also a matter that maybe in the environmental
samples they took there was no sarin found, but that does not
mean that sarin was not used,” Kane told Worlds Apart.

“It
was there in the human samples. If they had more time to go
around they would have found different samples. It was a limited
collection that they did, but the collection was conclusive. I
think, it was very comprehensive, therefore, we shared all of
those samples with the Syrian government.”

At the same time, there have been concerns voiced that witnesses
the UN team spoke to were brought by the opposition from
different regions and did not live in Western Ghouta.

“I think it is not possible to say ‘We brought them all from a
different area.’ To my mind that is inconceivable. You can come
up with the theory, but this does not mean the theory is
correct,” Kane said.

When asked if the UN team had requested examining dead bodies to
take more samples, Kane said they had not, because “there was
no need to exhume dead bodies” as victims’ accounts “are
much more powerful.”

“Dead body can’t tell you anything. The dead body can’t tell
how the person dies, how the person was affected, how the person
suffered. A living person can tell you that,” Kane
said.

After the UN team left Syria on Monday, Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts arrived in the
country. They are currently making preparations for the
disarmament. The OPCW team will start conducting tests on October 7.

The map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the
international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning
point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and
ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring —
are also pulling apart a region defined by European colonial powers a
century ago and defended by Arab autocrats ever since.

A different map would be a strategic game changer for just about
everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges,
trade and energy flows for much of the world, too.

Syria’s prime location and muscle make it the strategic center of the
Middle East. But it is a complex country, rich in religious and ethnic
variety, and therefore fragile. After independence, Syria reeled from
more than a half-dozen coups between 1949 and 1970, when the Assad
dynasty seized full control. Now, after 30 months of bloodletting,
diversity has turned deadly, killing both people and country. Syria has
crumbled into three identifiable regions, each with its own flag and
security forces. A different future is taking shape: a narrow statelet
along a corridor from the south through Damascus, Homs and Hama to the
northern Mediterranean coast controlled by the Assads’ minority Alawite
sect. In the north, a small Kurdistan, largely autonomous since
mid-2012. The biggest chunk is the Sunni-dominated heartland.

Syria’s unraveling would set precedents for the region, beginning next
door. Until now, Iraq resisted falling apart because of foreign
pressure, regional fear of going it alone and oil wealth that bought
loyalty, at least on paper. But Syria is now sucking Iraq into its
maelstrom.

“The battlefields are merging,”
the United Nations envoy Martin Kobler told the Security Council in
July. “Iraq is the fault line between the Shia and the Sunni world and
everything which happens in Syria, of course, has repercussions on the
political landscape in Iraq.”

Over time, Iraq’s Sunni minority — notably in western Anbar Province,
site of anti-government protests — may feel more commonality with
eastern Syria’s Sunni majority. Tribal ties and smuggling span the
border. Together, they could form a de facto or formal Sunnistan. Iraq’s
south would effectively become Shiitestan, although separation is not
likely to be that neat.

The dominant political parties in the two Kurdish regions of Syria and
Iraq have longstanding differences, but when the border opened in
August, more than 50,000 Syrian Kurds fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, creating
new cross-border communities. Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi
Kurdistan, has also announced plans for the first summit meeting of 600
Kurds from some 40 parties in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran this fall.

“We feel that conditions are now appropriate,” said Kamal Kirkuki, the
former speaker of Iraq’s Kurdish Parliament, about trying to mobilize
disparate Kurds to discuss their future.

Outsiders have long gamed the Middle East: What if the Ottoman Empire
hadn’t been divvied up by outsiders after World War I? Or the map
reflected geographic realities or identities? Reconfigured maps
infuriated Arabs who suspected foreign plots to divide and weaken them
all over again.

I had never been a map gamer. I lived in Lebanon during the 15-year
civil war and thought it could survive splits among 18 sects. I also
didn’t think Iraq would splinter during its nastiest fighting in 2006-7.
But twin triggers changed my thinking.

The Arab Spring was the kindling. Arabs not only wanted to oust
dictators, they wanted power decentralized to reflect local identity or
rights to resources. Syria then set the match to itself and conventional
wisdom about geography.

New borders may be drawn in disparate, and potentially chaotic, ways.
Countries could unravel through phases of federation, soft partition or
autonomy, ending in geographic divorce.

Libya’s uprising was partly against the rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But it also reflected Benghazi’s quest to separate from domineering
Tripoli. Tribes differ. Tripolitanians look to the Maghreb, or western
Islamic world, while Cyrenaicans look to the Mashriq, or eastern Islamic
world. Plus, the capital hogs oil revenues, even though the east
supplies 80 percent of it.

So Libya could devolve into two or even three pieces. The Cyrenaica National Council in eastern Libya declared autonomy
in June. Southern Fezzan also has separate tribal and geographic
identities. More Sahelian than North African in culture, tribes and
identity, it could split off too.

Other states lacking a sense of common good or identity, the political
glue, are vulnerable, particularly budding democracies straining to
accommodate disparate constituencies with new expectations.

After ousting its longtime dictator, Yemen launched a fitful National Dialogue
in March to hash out a new order. But in a country long rived by a
northern rebellion and southern separatists, enduring success may depend
on embracing the idea of federation — and promises to let the south
vote on secession.

A new map might get even more intriguing. Arabs are abuzz about part of
South Yemen’s eventually merging with Saudi Arabia. Most southerners are
Sunni, as is most of Saudi Arabia; many have family in the kingdom. The
poorest Arabs, Yemenis could benefit from Saudi riches. In turn, Saudis
would gain access to the Arabian Sea for trade, diminishing dependence
on the Persian Gulf and fear of Iran’s virtual control over the Strait
of Hormuz.

The most fantastical ideas involve the Balkanization of Saudi Arabia,
already in the third iteration of a country that merged rival tribes by
force under rigid Wahhabi Islam. The kingdom seems physically secured in
glass high-rises and eight-lane highways, but it still has disparate
cultures, distinct tribal identities and tensions between a Sunni
majority and a Shiite minority, notably in the oil-rich east.

Social strains are deepening from rampant corruption and about 30
percent youth unemployment in a self-indulgent country that may have to
import oil in two decades. As the monarchy moves to a new generation,
the House of Saud will almost have to create a new ruling family from
thousands of princes, a contentious process.

Other changes may be de facto. City-states — oases of multiple
identities like Baghdad, well-armed enclaves like Misurata, Libya’s
third largest city, or homogeneous zones like Jabal al-Druze in southern
Syria — might make a comeback, even if technically inside countries.

A century after the British adventurer-cum-diplomat Sir Mark Sykes and
the French envoy François Georges-Picot carved up the region,
nationalism is rooted in varying degrees in countries initially defined
by imperial tastes and trade rather than logic. The question now is
whether nationalism is stronger than older sources of identity during
conflict or tough transitions.

Syrians like to claim that nationalism will prevail whenever the war
ends. The problem is that Syria now has multiple nationalisms.
“Cleansing” is a growing problem. And guns exacerbate differences.
Sectarian strife generally is now territorializing the split between
Sunnis and Shiites in ways not seen in the modern Middle East.

But other factors could keep the Middle East from fraying — good
governance, decent services and security, fair justice, jobs and
equitably shared resources, or even a common enemy. Countries are
effectively mini-alliances. But those factors seem far off in the Arab
world. And the longer Syria’s war rages on, the greater the instability
and dangers for the whole region.

Robin Wright is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion
Across the Islamic World” and a distinguished scholar at the United
States Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center.

Just as it seemed the Empire was going to embark on yet
another evil little war, a miracle happened on the road to Damascus. A sensible
solution proposed by Moscow caught the Washington warmongers off-guard, and
removed their justification for war. Between that and the overwhelming lack
of popular support, the Empire backed
down – for now.

Rage Against Russia

In an unprecedented move, the New York Timespublished
an op-ed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, on September 12. Wishing to
address Americans directly, Putin laid out a case for international law, reason
and caution, and not allying with Al-Qaeda.

While the response of the general public was overwhelmingly positive, the
establishment frothed in rage. The Imperial establishment has long
been disdainful of the “uppity” Russians not knowing their place in the
brave new world. Putin’s chiding about American “exceptionalism” – mentioned
in Obama’s speech the night before – incensed them even further.

What the Russian president was objecting to wasn’t so much the notion of Americans
seeing themselves as “exceptional” – after all, what nation does not? – but
taking this to mean they are exempt from rules they expect everyone else
to follow. The last
time a world power construed exceptionalism in this fashion, over 20 million
Russians died before that misunderstanding was buried by the rubble of
Berlin.

The point of Putin’s persuasion was clearly lost on the Beltway bombers. Republican
Senator John McCain, who never saw a war he didn’t like, went so far as to publish
an anti-Putin
rant in the Communist daily Pravda a week later.

Unlike Americans, Russians seem to have learned from history. McCain’s words
ring hollow after the decade-long betrayal of Russian trust following Gorbachev’s
move to end the Cold War, during which Russia was looted by a pro-American cabal
of oligarchs, and humiliated by a belligerent and expanding NATO. The 1999 attack
on Serbia was the breaking point, prompting the Russian security establishment
to oust the Yeltsin regime in what was effectively a palace coup. Yet despite
U.S. officials and US-funded “activists” in Russia repeatedly disputing Putin’s
legitimacy, the Russian electoral process is far more transparent and accountable
than its American counterpart, and Putin enjoys margins of support US presidents
can only envy.

For all that, Russia has never been hostile to the US – only to the notion
of a world-spanning absolute Empire the US seems to have become. Demonizing
Putin and Russia has actually harmed America’s national security, as Stephen
Cohen recently
argued. Except the Empire doesn’t care about national interests any
more: white-knighting around the world is the default
foreign policy in Washington.

A Shining Example

Though Bosnia in 1995 was the pilot episode for “bombs for peace,” the 1999
attack on Serbia is usually considered the first true “humanitarian” intervention.
Everything that Putin’s op-ed listed as wrong and irresponsible in Empire’s
approach to Syria applies to the Kosovo
War: wanton violation of international law, support for terrorism and jihad,
false-flag operations and propaganda.

Nor did any of that stop in 1999, when the war officially ended. Just the
other day, there was an
attack on a EU police patrol, in the north of the occupied province (declared
an independent state in 2008). The media quickly implied that the culprits were
local Serbs, who have resisted attempts to subject them to Albanian authority.

The particular spot where the EU police was ambushed, however, is in an area
controlled by ethnic Albanians, and has already been the site of three attempted
false-flag attacks. The last one, in April 2003, failed spectacularly when two
terrorists (then members of the NATO-sponsored “Kosovo Protection Corps”) died
as their demolition charge went off prematurely.

In all likelihood, the latest false-flag attack is another attempt to brute-force
the local Serbs into submitting. Under the terms of the “agreement” between
Belgrade and the Albanian “government” in Pristina, existing Serbian institutions
in the province are to be dismantled and replaced by new local governments,
elected on November 3 under “Kosovian” laws. Belgrade has been pushing
hard, but the local Serbs have largely refused to go along.

Altered Awareness

Even as such staunch Imperial allies as the UK withdrew support for a war in
Syria, the Balkans client states supported it loudly. One could understand Hashim
Thaci, the “Prime Minister of Kosovo,” backing
a scenario that put him in power; or Zlatko Lagumdzija, the Muslim foreign minister
of Bosnia, joining his Turkish colleague in hyperbolic
comparisons of Syria with the Bosnian War. NATO member Croatia has already
taken part in the weapons
airlift to the Syrian rebels with enthusiasm. But what possessed the regime
in Montenegro to clamor for war?

For its part, the occupied
Serbia has declared it would “await guidance from Brussels” on what to think
about the whole affair. Such behavior is part of the government’s program to
“alter the awareness” of the general public into something more acceptable to
Brussels and Washington.

After his deputy Aleksandar Vucic went on a
media blitz back in August, PM Ivica Dacic followed suit with a recent op-ed
in Financial Times (aimed at Western elites, not the masses, since it
ended up behind a paywall). In it he waxed pathetic about his “historical” mission
to change Serbia into a “normal” country – by giving up land, culture and identity
in exchange for a Bright European Future. That such a “future” is most likely
to resemble the present of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Romania,
Bulgaria, etc. is a thought Dacic and his regime absolutely refuse to acknowledge,
much less entertain.

To them, it is a heresy, crimethink of the worst kind, to even imagine
an alternative to unconditional surrender to the EU and the Empire. They’ve
managed to achieve the same level of reality denial as their masters in Brussels
and Washington.

A Dangerous Narrative

It is precisely this internalization of Imperial discourse – coming to love
Big Brother, to borrow Orwell’s phrase – that enables Empire’s delusions about
the world to continue, though. After all, how can they be delusions if someone
else believes them as well?

Thus fortified, Washington warmongers are trying to shoehorn Syria into the
Balkans narrative, even though in reality a Syrian war would be far
more destructive and dangerous, not just to the region but to America itself.

Particularly cynical is the claim that they are doing this to “save civilians.”
In 1999, NATO
was fully aware that intervention would endanger the civilians in Kosovo
more, yet they attacked anyway. Even activists sympathetic to the Empire
now
hope there won’t be a war against Syria, and don’t have fond memories on
being on the receiving end of “democratic ordnance.”

One of the reasons for the (un)civil war in Syria in the first place is that
the Empire has already
intervened there, from the very beginning. Just like in Kosovo, however,
its proxies are being soundly thrashed by the government, so an escalation to
overt war is a way to save their hides, as well as Empire’s prestige.

Empire’s blundering on Syria has been compared to that of Germany’s Kaiser
Wilhelm on the eve of WW1. Perhaps that explains the ongoing
push to rehabilitate Berlin and Vienna – while shifting the blame onto Russia
and Serbia – as the centenary of the Great War approaches.

Reality
is not something that can be changed with enough wishful thinking. There is
no such thing as a humanitarian bomb. Those who consider themselves above the
law aren’t police, but rogues. So “exceptional” is the establishment in Washington,
these simple truths continue to elude them.

Stepping up hostilities with the United
States, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela expelled the top American
diplomat and two other embassy officials from the country on Monday,
accusing them of supporting plots to sabotage the country’s electrical
grid and the economy.

“Get out of Venezuela! Yankee go home!” Mr. Maduro shouted as he
announced the expulsions at a military event to commemorate the
bicentennial of a battle in Venezuela’s war of independence.

“We have detected a group of officials of the United States Embassy in
Caracas, in Venezuela, and we have been tracking them for several
months,” Mr. Maduro said during a live television broadcast.

“These
officials spend their time meeting with the Venezuelan extreme right
wing, financing them and encouraging them to take actions to sabotage
the electrical system, to sabotage the Venezuelan economy.”

The expulsions were the latest diplomatic swipe at Washington by Mr.
Maduro since he took over for the country’s longtime president, Hugo
Chávez, who died in March. Late last year, as Mr. Chávez grew
increasingly ill, the two nations held informal talks aimed at improving
the long-strained relations between them, and there was some optimism
on the American side that Mr. Maduro, a former foreign minister
sometimes described as pragmatic, would be amenable to a thaw.

But it quickly became clear that Mr. Maduro intended to stick closely to
Mr. Chávez’s example, painting the United States as an imperialist
aggressor out to undermine his government. Early on, he accused the
Obama administration of plotting against him, and hours before he
announced the death of Mr. Chávez
on March 5, he kicked out two American military attachés, saying they
had tried to recruit Venezuelan military personnel to conspire against
the government.

The diplomats expelled on Monday included Kelly Keiderling, the chargé
d’affaires, who runs the embassy in the absence of an ambassador here.
The United States has not had an ambassador in Caracas since 2010, when
Mr. Chávez refused to accept the new one proposed by Washington because
of remarks that Mr. Chávez said were disrespectful.

Mr. Chávez had already expelled the American ambassador, Patrick Duddy,
in 2008, saying that his government had discovered an American-supported
plot by military officers to topple him. Mr. Duddy was later allowed to
return to Caracas.

Another one of the diplomats expelled on Monday was Elizabeth Hoffman,
an official in the embassy’s political section, whom Mr. Maduro had
publicly accused at least as early as April of meeting with opposition
figures to plot sabotage of the electrical system. He said at the time
that he had proof but took no action until Monday. The third official
being expelled is David Moo, the vice consul.

Foreign Minister Elías Jaua later said on television that the evidence
against the American diplomats included meetings held in recent weeks
with democracy advocates, union members and elected officials belonging
to the political opposition, whom he accused of planning to destabilize
the country.

Mr. Maduro said the officials had 48 hours to leave the country.

“We completely reject the Venezuelan government’s allegations of U.S.
government involvement in any type of conspiracy to destabilize the
Venezuelan government,” the American Embassy said in a statement. It
called the meetings held by the officials “normal diplomatic
engagements,” adding, “We maintain regular contacts across the
Venezuelan political spectrum.”

Ever since he was elected by a narrow margin in April in a special
election to replace Mr. Chávez, Mr. Maduro has struggled with intense
economic woes and a deeply divided populace. He has often accused
plotters and saboteurs of being responsible for a variety of the
nation’s ills, including electrical blackouts and the deadly explosion
at the national oil company’s enormous Amuay refinery.

“He needs diversions and distractions,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue,
a policy group in Washington. “The situation is so dire in Venezuela
that he needs to find a scapegoat, and it’s convenient and politically
so tempting to kick out U.S. diplomats.”

But Mr. Shifter said that describing the United States as the source of
the country’s problems might not have the same effect it did for Mr.
Chávez, who was beloved by many of his supporters. Mr. Maduro does not
inspire nearly the same devotion, and the country’s economic woes are
getting worse, with inflation over 45 percent a year and shortages of
many basic foods and goods, including toilet paper.

“I doubt that it has the resonance it used to have,” Mr. Shifter said of the diplomatic expulsions.

For the reigning super power and the largest economy in the world, it's an egg-on-your-face moment. For the first time in 17
years, the U.S. government shut down as its democratically-elected
politicians could not come to an agreement over a spending bill. This
stalemate closed non-essential services, sending 800,000 federal workers
home without pay as lawmakers bickered about who was to blame. The
shutdown could cost the economy about $1 billion a week. The clash between
Republicans and Democrats rages over the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the
signature health care law of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Foreign media found the situation "bizarre."

Across the Atlantic, France's Le Monde daily reports that the U.S. shutdown means almost a million government employees will be -- temporarily -- laid off. The paper says
that the drastic measure came after days of "parliamentary ping-pong"
between the Senate, with its Democrat majority, and the
Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

Le Monde's Alain Faujas
notes that the last government shutdown, in 1995-1996, cost $1.4
billion ($2 billion by today's standards), and saw the tide of public
opinion turn against the Republicans, who voters blamed for the chaos.
Months later -- thanks largely to the Republicans' blunder, Bill Clinton
was comfortably re-elected. Faujas questions whether history could
repeat itself, but observes that in 2011 when a shutdown was threatened a
Washington Post survey found that voters blamed the president and the
Republicans equally.

For the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian, Dan Roberts
describes the hours before the shutdown as being "as bizarre as they
are unpredictable." He says the final nine hours "could well have been
scripted by Hollywood."

"Amid stacks of pizza
boxes and rumours of heavy drinking, both chambers settled in for a
night of votes that were no longer designed to avert a shutdown, but to
decide which side would get the blame for causing it," he suggests.

The Times newspaper refers to "an extraordinary day of political theatrics and high emotions."

World 'scratching its head'

Germany's Der Spiegel
weekly reports that the world's most powerful government has ground to a
halt -- in theory, at least, since although the deadline has passed,
senators and congressmen are still meeting, still hoping for a deal, an
agreement in "injury time," meaning that the shutdown would last only
hours, rather than days or weeks, as was the case last time.

The magazine points out a three to four-week shutdown could cost as much as $55 billion, that's
on a par with the economic impact of Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm
Sandy.

Perhaps surprisingly,
Der Spiegel says, the world's markets have not reacted with panic. Thus
far global finance markets have shown little impact: In Japan, the
Nikkei closed higher, and as trading opened in Europe the Dax and
EuroStoxx indexes were only slightly down.

The magazine's Carsten Volkery puts this down to the fact
that the government shutdown came as no surprise, and had been priced
in to the markets for weeks. In any case, Volkery says, most observers
are expecting a speedy resolution to the crisis. In Malaysia, the Awani website
carries the headline "U.S. shutdown leaves the world scratching its
head." Kevin Sullivan writes that the world watched the looming showdown
"with a little anxiety and a lot of dismay, and some people had trouble
suppressing smirks."

Ahead of the shutdown, The Australian wrote
that "misplaced fiscal brinkmanship" in Washington doesn't "say much
for the budgetary processes in the world's largest economy."

"The irresponsible way
in which Congress, particularly Republicans, have played the politics of
partisan petulance and obstruction in their determination to defund or
at least delay President Barack Obama's healthcare law, known as
Obamacare, does them little credit," its editorial continues.

Russia Today's websitespeculates
that the shutdown may force President Obama to postpone a planned trip
to Balu to sign an important trans-Pacific trade deal. "While he could
still go if no deal is done by then, it could be a gift for his
Republican opponents if Obama was seen to be jetting off to a tropical
paradise at a time when federal employees were sent home without pay."

In the words of a veteran investor, watching the U.S. bond market
today is like sitting in a packed theater and smelling smoke. You look
around for signs of other nervous sniffers. But everyone else seems
oblivious.

Yes, the federal government shut down
this week. Yes, we are just two weeks away from the point when the
Treasury secretary says he will run out of cash if the debt ceiling
isn't raised. Yes, bond king Bill Gross
has been on TV warning that a default by the government would be
"catastrophic." Yet the yield on a 10-year Treasury note has fallen
slightly over the past month (though short-term T-bill rates ticked up
this week).

Part of the reason people aren't
rushing for the exits is that the comedy they are watching is so
horribly fascinating. In his vain attempt to stop the Senate striking
out the defunding of ObamaCare from the last version of the continuing
resolution, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz managed to quote Doctor Seuss while re-enacting a scene from the classic movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Meanwhile, President Obama has become
the Hamlet of the West Wing: One minute he's for bombing Syria, the next
he's not; one minute Larry Summers will succeed Ben Bernanke as
chairman of the Federal Reserve, the next he won't; one minute the
president is jetting off to Asia, the next he's not. To be in charge, or
not to be in charge: that is indeed the question.

According
to conventional wisdom, the key to what is going on is a Republican
Party increasingly at the mercy of the tea party. I agree that it was
politically inept to seek to block ObamaCare by these means. This is not
the way to win back the White House and Senate. But responsibility also
lies with the president, who has consistently failed to understand that
a key function of the head of the executive branch is to twist the arms
of legislators on both sides. It was not the tea party that shot down
Mr. Summers's nomination as Fed chairman; it was Democrats like Sen.
Elizabeth Warren, the new face of the American left.

Yet, entertaining as all this
political drama may seem, the theater itself is indeed burning. For the

fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today
than is commonly realized. As anyone can see who reads the most recent
long-term budget outlook—published last month by the Congressional
Budget Office, and almost entirely ignored by the media—the question is
not if the United States will default but when and on which of its
rapidly spiraling liabilities.

True, the federal deficit has fallen to about 4% of GDP this year
from its 10% peak in 2009. The bad news is that, even as discretionary
expenditure has been slashed, spending on entitlements has continued to
rise—and will rise inexorably in the coming years, driving the deficit
back up above 6% by 2038.

A very striking feature of the latest CBO report is how much worse it
is than last year's. A year ago, the CBO's extended baseline series for
the federal debt in public hands projected a figure of 52% of GDP by
2038. That figure has very nearly doubled to 100%. A year ago the debt
was supposed to glide down to zero by the 2070s. This year's long-run
projection for 2076 is above 200%. In this devastating reassessment, a
crucial role is played here by the more realistic growth assumptions
used this year.

As the CBO noted last month in its 2013 "Long-Term Budget Outlook,"
echoing the work of Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff:
"The increase in debt relative to the size of the economy, combined with
an increase in marginal tax rates (the rates that would apply to an
additional dollar of income), would reduce output and raise interest
rates relative to the benchmark economic projections that CBO used in
producing the extended baseline. Those economic differences would lead
to lower federal revenues and higher interest payments. . . .

"At some point, investors would begin to doubt the government's
willingness or ability to pay U.S. debt obligations, making it more
difficult or more expensive for the government to borrow money.
Moreover, even before that point was reached, the high and rising amount
of debt that CBO projects under the extended baseline would have
significant negative consequences for both the economy and the federal
budget."

Just how negative becomes clear when one considers the full range of
scenarios offered by CBO for the period from now until 2038. Only in
three of 13 scenarios—two of which imagine politically highly unlikely
spending cuts or tax hikes—does the debt shrink from its current level
of 73% of GDP. In all the others it increases to between 77% and 190% of
GDP. It should be noted that this last figure can reasonably be
considered among the more likely of the scenarios, since it combines the
alternative fiscal scenario, in which politicians in Washington behave
as they have done in the past, raising spending more than taxation.

Only a fantasist can seriously believe "this is not a crisis." The
fiscal arithmetic of excessive federal borrowing is nasty even when
relatively optimistic assumptions are made about growth and interest
rates. Currently, net interest payments on the federal debt are around
8% of GDP. But under the CBO's extended baseline scenario, that share
could rise to 20% by 2026, 30% by 2049, and 40% by 2072. By 2088, the
last date for which the CBO now offers projections, interest payments
would—absent any changes in current policy—absorb just under half of all
tax revenues. That is another way of saying that policy is
unsustainable.

The question is what on earth can be done to prevent the debt
explosion. The CBO has a clear answer: "[B]ringing debt back down to 39
percent of GDP in 2038—as it was at the end of 2008—would require a
combination of increases in revenues and cuts in noninterest spending
(relative to current law) totaling 2 percent of GDP for the next 25
years. . . .

"If those changes came entirely from revenues, they would represent
an increase of 11 percent relative to the amount of revenues projected
for the 2014-2038 period; if the changes came entirely from spending,
they would represent a cut of 10½ percent in noninterest spending from
the amount projected for that period."

Anyone watching this week's political
shenanigans in Washington will grasp at once the tiny probability of tax
hikes or spending cuts on this scale.

It should now be clear that what we are watching in Washington is not
a comedy but a game of Russian roulette with the federal government's
creditworthiness. So long as the Federal Reserve continues with the
policies of near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing, the gun
will likely continue to fire blanks. After all, Fed purchases of
Treasurys, if continued at their current level until the end of the
year, will account for three quarters of new government borrowing.

But the mere prospect of a taper, beginning in late May, was already
enough to raise long-term interest rates by more than 100 basis points.
Fact (according to data in the latest "Economic Report of the
President"): More than half the federal debt in public hands is held by
foreigners. Fact: Just under a third of the debt has a maturity of less
than a year.

Hey, does anyone else smell something burning?

Mr. Ferguson's latest book is "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die" (Penguin Press, 2013).

A US debt default could hit on Thursday, and
world leaders are second guessing the dominant role America plays in
finance. Regardless of the final decision in Washington, confidence and
credibility in the US has already eroded. In an editorial published by the Chinese
state-owned press agency Xinhua, a columnist says the US economy
has ‘failed’ and put many countries who hold state assets in
dollars, at risk.

“To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin
a de-Americanized world,” the editorial read.

Last week China, the biggest US creditor, started to make
preparations for a technical default on loans. The European
Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China (PBC) have agreed to
start supplying each other with their currencies, avoiding the
dollar as an intermediary currency. The currency swap agreement
will last for three years and provide a maximum of 350 billion
Yuan ($56 billion) to the ECB and 45 billion euro ($60.8 billion)
to the PBC.

In a further sign of growing distrust, China introduced a so-called “haircut”, or
a discount, on the value of US Treasuries held as collateral
against futures trades. Developing and developed nations are equally concerned, and
institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) have issued several warnings.

Christine LaGarde, managing director of the IMF told the US they
must uphold their financial promises to the international
community and raise their debt ceiling. Failing to do so would
put the world “at risk of tipping yet again into a
recession,” LaGarde said in an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the
Press’, which aired on October 13.

“You have to honor your signature, … give certainty to the
rest of the world,” LaGarde urged the US, a strong supporter
of the international lending tool.

The country that has long provided a sturdy backbone to the
global economy is now teetering on a mass default. If US
lawmakers don’t forge a solution to raising the debt ceiling by
October 17, investors with US treasury bonds, one of the
lowest-risk assets, could suffer.

“It’s not just China that’s at the mercy of US lawmakers, its
everybody in the world that is at the mercy of US lawmakers right
now,” David Kuo, Investment Advisor, Motley Fool told RT .

“China is trying to diversify away from US Treasuries,” said
Kuo, adding investors “cannot just assume an asset is 100 percent
safe.”

China
holds nearly $1.3 trillion in Treasuries, Japan has $1.14
trillion, and other big foreign creditors include Caribbean
creditors, Brazil, Taiwan, Russia, and European nations. Other
creditors have decided to keep calm. Russia, ranked the 11th on the list
of the US top creditors with
the estimated $132 billion in US Treasuries, plans to keep their
Treasuries.

"I don't see the need for revising our reserve investment
strategy in US Treasuries," Russian Finance Minister Anton
Siluanov said at a press conference on October 11 following a
meeting of the G20 finance and Central Bank chiefs. “What’s happening now, I hope, is a fairly short-term
situation,” Siluanov told reporters, noting Russia’s
investment plan is long-term.

If the US misses the debt ceiling deadline of October 17 and stops paying
their creditors, it would be the first major Western government
to do so since Nazi Germany under Hitler in 1933, which wasn’t
able to pay their debts following World War I. The US has a bank holiday today in honor of Columbus Day;
however, after making little headway on solving the budget gap,
both the Senate and the House will hold sessions on Monday.

For Republicans, Obamacare has been a major stumbling block in
agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, as they see the legislation
as antithetical to their ‘small government’ philosophy.

Beijing Calls for Creation of New “Reserve Currency” to Replace the U.S. Dollar

By Pepe Escobar

This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It’s time to build a “de-Americanized” world. It’s time for a “new international reserve currency” to replace the US dollar. It’s all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon’s mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts – and that applies especially to the Washington elites. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.Long gone are the Deng Xiaoping days of “keeping a low profile”. The Xinhua editorial summarizes the straw that broke the dragon’s back – the current US shutdown. After the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, after the war on Iraq, a “befuddled world”, and not only China, wants change. This paragraph couldn’t be more graphic:

Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies. The solution, for Beijing, is to “de-Americanize” the current geopolitical equation – starting with more say in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for emerging economies and the developing world, leading to a “new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant US dollar”. (1)

Note that Beijing is not advocating completely smashing the Bretton Woods system – at least for now, but it is for having more deciding power. Sounds reasonable, considering that China holds slightly more weight inside the IMF than Italy. IMF “reform” – sort of – has been going on since 2010, but Washington, unsurprisingly, has vetoed anything substantial.As for the move away from the US dollar, it’s also already on, in varying degrees of speed, especially concerning trade amongst the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, China and South Africa), which is now overwhelmingly in their respective currencies. The US dollar is slowly but surely being replaced by a basket of currencies.

“De-Americanization” is also already on. Take last week’s Chinese trade charm offensive across Southeast Asia, which is incisively leaning towards even more action with their top commercial partner, China. Chinese President Xi Jinping clinched an array of deals with Indonesia, Malaysia and also Australia, only a few weeks after clinching another array of deals with the Central Asian “stans”.Chinese commitment to improve the Iron Silk Road reached fever pitch, with shares of Chinese rail companies going through the roof amid the prospect of a high-speed rail link with and through Thailand actually materializing. In Vietnam, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sealed an understanding that two country’s territorial quarrels in the South China Sea would not interfere with even more business. Take that, “pivoting” to Asia.

All aboard the petroyuan

Everyone knows Beijing holds Himalayas of US Treasury bonds – courtesy of those massive trade surpluses accumulated over the past three decades plus an official policy of keeping the yuan appreciating very slowly, yet surely.

At the same time, Beijing has been acting. The yuan is also slowly but surely becoming more convertible in international markets. (Just last week, the European Central Bank and the People?s Bank of China agreed to set up a US$45-$57 billion currency swap line that will add to the yuan’s international strength and improve access to trade finance in the euro area.)

The unofficial date for full yuan convertibility could fall anywhere between 2017 and 2020. The target is clear; move away from piling up US debt, which implies, in the long run, Beijing removing itself from this market – and thus making it way more costly for the US to borrow. The collective leadership in Beijing has already made up its mind about it, and is acting accordingly. The move towards a full convertible yuan is as inexorable as the BRICS move towards a basket of currencies progressively replacing the US dollar as a reserve currency. Until, further on down the road, the real cataclysmic event materializes; the advent of the petroyuan – destined to surpass the petrodollar once the Gulf petro-monarchies see which way the historical winds are blowing. Then we will enter a completely different geopolitical ball game.We may be a long way away, but what is certain is that Deng Xiaoping’s famous set of instructions is being progressively discarded; “Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.” A mix of caution and deception, grounded on China’s historical confidence and taking into consideration serious long-term ambition, this was classic Sun Tzu. So far, Beijing was laying low; letting the adversary commit fatal mistakes (and what a collection of multi-trillion-dollar mistakes… ); and accumulating “capital”. The time to capitalize has now arrived. By 2009, after the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, there were already Chinese rumblings about the “malfunctioning of the Western model” and ultimately the “malfunctioning of Western culture”. Beijing has listened to Dylan (with Mandarin subtitles?) and concluded yes, the times they-are-a-changing. With no foreseeable social, economic and political progress – the shutdown is just another graphic illustration, if any was needed – the US slide is as inexorable as China, bit by bit, spreading its wings to master 21st century post-modernity.Make no mistake; the Washington elites will fight it like the ultimate plague. Still, Antonio Gramsci’s intuition must now be upgraded; the old order has died, and the new one is one step closer to being born.

A colossal, bronze Jesus Christ, cast in Armenia, has appeared in war-ravaged Syria “to save the world.” Soaring higher than Rio’s famous Christ the Redeemer, the statue stands 39 meters tall in the mountaintop, Byzantine-era Cherubim Monastery, lording it over the city of Saidnaya, 27 kilometers north of Damascus, Armenian news outlets reported. Some Russian outlets said that the statue is one meter shorter than its Brazilian counterpart.

From its vantage point above the sea, the statue overlooks an historic pilgrimage route from Istanbul to Jerusalem. The statue, created by Armenian sculptor Artush Papoian, was installed on October 14, when Orthodox Christians celebrate a commemoration of the Virgin Mary, whose icon is a chief draw for the monastery.

But the statue was not born of recent events in Syria. While Syria's ethnic Armenian population has been fleeing the country in droves -- including to Armenia itself, which has built a "New Aleppo" to accommodate the arrivals -- the project has been in the works since 2005, Russia's Komsomol'skaya Pravda reports.

Backed by the Russian government (which has a navy base on Syria's Mediterranean Sea coast, and, as we all know by now, takes an active interest in matters Syrian), along with the Russian Orthodox Church, the project, billed "I have come to save the world," was supposedly the brainchild of one Yuri Gavrilov, a 49-year-old Moscow native who runs an organization in London called the St. Paul and St. George Foundation.

“We hope that this sculptural composition brings peace and love to the hearts of people, and that our work will help restore peace and calm in this long-suffering region,” the Foundation’s director, Samir el-Gadban, told Komsomol'skaya Pravda.

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About Me

I'm not here to make friends nor am I here to talk about girls, sports, cars or music. I'm here to have an impact on the minds of young, Anglophone Armenians. I want to expose visitors to this blog to an alternative perspective on Armenology, Christianity, history and the most important yet least understood topic on earth - geopolitics. Armenians need to be proud of the fact that their ancient homeland is the origin of human civilization. Armenians need to realize that Christ was not the Jewish Messiah. Armenians must understand that Armenia belongs within Russia's orbit. I have been closely observing Russia since Vladimir Putin's rise to power. Putin is one of the greatest political figures in history. With the Anglo-American-Zionist global establishment's toxic effects all around us, Putin's Russia has risen to become the last hope for the traditional nation-state and European civilization. The Caucasus is a violent and unforgiving place. Armenia's survival as a nation in the south Caucasus is only made possible by the presence of a strong Russia within the region. Hail Russia - the last front against Western imperialism, Globalism, Zionism, Islamic extremism and pan-Turkism.